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LONDON – Theresa May was quietly sipping a tea in the corner of a small room at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester last October. The British prime minister had just delivered a speech intended to restore his authority over a ruling party that was slipping into the polls and was torn apart by the country's decision to leave the European Union
. A joker handed her a false dismissal notice, she struggled with a persistent cough and even the slogan behind her, "Building a country that works for everyone," failed when several letters fell to the ground, causing laughter from the audience. His grip on power never seemed weaker.
When Chris Wilkins, May's speechwriter at the time, entered the room where the prime minister was sitting with her husband and a handful of helpers, the atmosphere was tense. He wondered briefly if she was about to resign.
But May shrugged. She said, "There is nothing I can do about it. It was not my fault. That's one of those things, "says Wilkins
. It was typically emotionless, say more than a dozen people who worked with May. These people, including current and former badistants and a former minister, portray her as someone who meets criticism, disaster and success with the same answer – take each day as it comes and get back to work.
In the interviews, they talked about his resilience, his sense of duty and his attention to detail. They said the traits that helped May recover from this calamitous speech in Manchester also influenced her approach to pull Britain out of the EU: working through the details, absorbing failures and continuing to go.
May is far away and lacks vision, a "Maybot". In their opinion, she stumbles over the Brexit negotiations with Brussels, an accidental prime minister doing a job that nobody else wants.
The Brexit plan was undermined this week when two senior ministers resigned to protest against its willingness to agree to an agreement that, in many ways, will continue to bind Britain to the EU. David Davis, the minister responsible for Brexit negotiations, and Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, both strongly pro-Brexit, resigned at a few hours intervals. May has immediately appointed replacements, but she is now facing powerful opponents who are free to attack her from outside the government.
May was to establish a plan Thursday for what her government calls a "pragmatic and practical Brexit". for a free trade zone for goods that irritated a lot in his party.
He will offer more details on a position to try to move to Brexit negotiations that have virtually ceased.
He will establish measures to ensure a frictionless trade to protect "jobs and livelihoods," and a desire for "unparalleled security partnership," but will emphasize that it allows Great Britain to "To regain control of its borders, laws, and money."
to argue that Britain should set its own commercial tariffs and open service markets, an attempt to meet the demands of business, EU-pro voters, Brexit and EU supporters who have repeatedly warned that the time issue is to know the EU will accept what some Brussels officials are simply seeing as an offer of money. opening.
Although her grip on power has seemed fragile, she seems to have so far faced any vast rebellion.
Britain has less than nine months to organize its place in the world outside the EU. On March 29, Britain will leave the bloc to which it adhered more than 40 years ago and the task is enormous: most of the British economy and laws governing trade and workers' rights are closely linked to those of its European partners. The person at the center of the maelstrom is May, and his calm reserve plays a key role in the formation of Brexit.
"She took more trouble than any other Prime Minister in my lifetime, and none of them is her fault. She did not create any," said Ken Clarke , former Conservative Party state leader, Clarke has served as head of several departments, including as Minister of the Interior and Minister of Finance in a five-decade career, the wake of ministerial resignations. told Parliament that she would continue her plans, describing them as "Fair Brexit".
The "Steady" Choice
When the British narrowly voted to leave the EU in a referendum June 2016, the result divided the country and the Conservative Party.May emerged from chaos as the "stable" choice to succeed David Cameron as leader of the party and prime minister.
Like Cameron, she had campaigned for Britain remains in the EU but after her appointment as as prime minister in July 2016, she promised to respect the will of the people and to fight their way out of the bloc. She made a trump of a discreet and lonely style that contrasted with her media predecessor ..
"I do not shoot in television studios. I do not talk about people during lunch. I will not drink in the bars of Parliament. I do not often wear my heart on my sleeve. I just did the work in front of me, "she said at the time.
May 61 does not belong to a party faction, and even though she was home secretary for six years under Cameron, she was not part of her clique. She does not like media interviews, say current and former badistants, and she is uncomfortable in the social gatherings that are integral to the role of party leader.
"If you have a choice between sitting at a meeting that is" it's a policy area that really matters, and spending half an hour or half an hour for a media interview, she will choose the first one because that is her job, "said Wilkins, former speechwriter
. A comparison of May's and Cameron's prime ministers' diaries illustrates their difference in style. During a three-month sampling period, from April to June 2016, Mr. Cameron had more than 10 meetings with national media and media and organized two social events at his Downing Street residence. During the same three months of 2017, May had a meeting with the regional media. There was no party at Downing Street. A senior official at 10 Downing Street said the prime minister was "always busy, always at receptions, mostly charity meetings." Maybe she's not having three dinners a week with the owners of media, but everyone's style is different. "
A leading Conservative Party donor, Alexander Temerko, a British citizen from Ukraine, compared the behavior of the two leaders. Where May was booked, he said, Cameron was accessible. May deliver "a beautiful speech, shake hands, wander, a few words and then she goes away."
"There were a lot of pictures with David, he's much hotter."
Frances O 'Grady, secretary general of Britain's leading labor organization, the Trades Union Congress, lamented that she had met May only once, "and I I have thought in the past about the fact that I have met (Germany) Angela Merkel, the President of Ireland and several others a lot more times than our own Prime Minister. "
The Door May's spokeswoman replied that the prime minister regularly met with industry leaders and strove to support the workers. ] Sometimes the public confused May's cold store, and it hurt, said the former minister and an aide. When a fire in a block of social housing killed 71 people in London in June 2017, many Britons accused May of lacking empathy. On the first anniversary of the fire, May said she would still regret not meeting the survivors immediately after the disaster.
Two Conservative Party colleagues described May as a troublesome companion. If there were two people in a room, they said, "She remains silent until asked a question."
An image of one of the first summits of the EU, in December 2016, showed her alone, fiddling with her headline, as other leaders chatted and kissed. His critics have seized on the photo as a symbol of the isolation of Britain.
But an old aide describes such moments as "duck back water" for May. It suits him to stay at a distance, says help. In negotiations to get an agreement on Brexit, described as a 3D chess game by a colleague, such reluctance can be helpful. His approach is to say little, to focus on the details and to leave the court to other members of his team, like his Brexit advisor, Oliver Robbins
. his relationship with his colleagues Sherpas, Tim Barrow (Permanent Representative of Great Britain to the EU) seduces diplomats, Prime Minister speaks to leaders. "
May is not a European recruit." During her six years as a secretary at home, she attended many meetings of the EU Justice and Home Affairs Council, which develops the EU's security and crime policy and has developed a dislike for European jargon In early 2016, speech writers wrote the word "solidarity" in a speech that the Prime Minister May objected that she had attended "too many EU meetings where we talk about solidarity all the time, so can we use another word if it is "They agreed to" shared society "instead.To leave the block, admit that may still be at the peak of detail in the talks.But, they add, she and her government can often show a lack of understanding the operation of the block May's detractors, including Some say to the Conservative Party, say that its English "provincial" roots make it ill-equipped for European diplomacy.
Village home
If you want to understand May, go to Maidenhead, advise two other colleagues who know her well. They were referring to the city on the Thames, in West London, which she has represented in Parliament since 1997. The village of Sonning, a few miles upstream, is her adoptive home.
With whitewashed cottages mixed between palatial houses, this is a clbadic example of the well-maintained countryside in the affluent areas of southern England.
"She loves the area," said Richard Kellaway, an oil and chemical storage consultant on the city council and president of the Maidenhead Conservatory. Association. "It's really his home."
When the month of May is at its lowest – as she was after Manchester's speech and the London block of housing – she retires to her job and to Sonning, said several badistants. Her husband, Philip, is a great support, according to those who know the month of May well; he is often on his wife's side at Downing Street during the week and at Sonning, where they spend most weekends. When in the village, she has a church routine every Sunday and regular trips to the supermarket near Twyford. After running to Brussels in the early hours of a December morning for another at a lengthy series of Brexit crisis meetings, May returned to Maidenhead on December 8th. become an honorary member of the local Rotary Club. "Ms. May met with club president John Clegg and other club members at Maidenhead Town Hall to receive a certificate and a Rotary lapel pin," the club said at the time
. April, May was soon back in his riding to participate in the opening of the summer exhibition at the Stanley Spencer Art Gallery in Cookham Village.
"She had slept for about two hours," Kellaway said. In May and June, the month of May was marked by a new Brexit crisis, this time on the fate of the border between Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, and the United Kingdom. Ireland, member of the EU. She always found time to open a renovated church in Maidenhead, visit the local non-profit Citizens Advice Service and attend the annual Maidenhead Duck Derby.
The attributes of the Prime Minister of the world's fifth-largest economy do not suit him. She does not like having to have a security detail, regularly checks and checks the front door of her Tudor-style home in Sonning to make sure it's closed even though it's not safe. 39; is probably one of the safest homes in Britain.
An enthusiastic cook, she does not feel at home in Cameron's steel kitchen and his wife living on Downing Street, saying it's not a "cook's kitchen." She is not a fan of Checkers, a 16th century mansion. retirement used by British prime ministers. She hates to swear. She will run after her staff if they leave something behind her in her office, say current and former badistants. A creature of the habit, she often has the same chicken salad from the sandwich chain.
Persona & # 39; Maybot & # 39;
The helpers say that May has a bright memory. Kellaway, Maidenhead's counselor, remembers her delivering a perfect rehearsal of a rap performed for her by schoolchildren. But his mechanical delivery to the cameras earned him to be known as "Maybot" in the British media – and the etiquette remained.
May's team made the decision to use speeches to expose "thoughtful arguments." They hoped that it would be better suited to May's style than to the politics on Twitter of some other world leaders, such as US President Donald Trump. His former speechwriter, Wilkins, explained May's methods. She sat with Wilkins and his chief of staff, Nick Timothy, to draw the themes. The two men would then write a rough draft, which May would read and reply in a few hours. She leaned over the detail.
May knew that his speech in Manchester last October would be one of the most important of his tenure as prime minister. She wanted to badert her authority over her party after a bad performance in a general election four months earlier. The Conservatives had won the most seats, but were counting on the support of a small party in Northern Ireland for the majority.
Preparing the speech, Wilkins asked May for a narrative to describe his motivation to stay in politics. His response was: "And when people ask me why I've come out – the long hours, the pressure, the criticism and the insults that inevitably accompany the work – I tell them this: I do it to root out injustice and giving "
May explained her vision of the" British dream "by talking about her grandmother, a maid under the stairs, who had three professors and a prime minister among her grandchildren
we all went, "It's great," and she said: "Is it?", Remembers Wilkins. "Yes, it's human, that's what it's about." It was the perfect material to make her more human, Wilkins said, but she had not recognized him. Unfortunately for May, few people remember the content of this speech. We remember rather the jester, May's cough and the disintegrated whole
May inspires loyalty in her team because she is, according to several aides, the accomplished professional. But apart from this small team, this professionalism can be very cold. A party colleague, a critic of May, described her as "a sphinx without enigma".
This imperturbability, however, has its uses during the complex and complex process of Brexit. As a member of the Conservative Party who complains about May's handling of the process said, "I'm going to give it one thing, it just keeps going."
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