United Kingdom

Consider the actions of a prime minister in May's position who genuinely cared about the national interest. They would have recognised the gravity of the situation from the beginning, and used their political capital to start telling necessary truths and building inevitable compromises. They would have spent months drawing up a comprehensive plan for triggering Article 50, found out exactly what was achievable and in what time frame. They would have used good faith to craft dialogues, alliances and back-up plans. They would have squared with voters and MPs alike.

May refused to do any of this. She interpreted the result in the most damaging way available to her, triggered the formal process much too early, and didn't bother to educate herself about any of it until after the talks had begun. Where she could have told the truth, she instead branded any moderate compromise as betrayal. Where she could have defeated the hardline Brexiters with her superior power, she instead aligned herself with them time and time again, even when it was clear she could never placate them and they would eventually turn on her. Where she could have shown leadership and courage, she instead failed to tell any Leavers that they would lose out, either because she didn't know or didn't want to know. Neither was good enough. Each action was conceived and implemented in a bunker insulated from reality. When problems struck, May simply pretended they didn't exist or manufactured a short-term fix to take her to the end of that particular week.

In office May became a compulsive liar. She lied that we would have a trade deal ready to implement in March 2019, when in June 2019 the multiple-year negotiations for it have not even begun. She lied that the backstop did not include a customs union, and lied about our freedom to sign trade deals while participating in it. She denied that we would enter into a transition, or pay a significant divorce bill, or continue free movement after 2019, even though it soon became obvious to anyone with a passing interest in politics, history or reality. She insisted, Trump-style, that her government's statistics did not show Brexit would make us less prosperous (they did), and that there was a Brexit dividend she could spend on the NHS (there wasn't). May must have known she would eventually have to climb down and admit the defeat of each lie, but each time she simply replaced it with something else. By the time she stopped lying, it was too late to tell the truth.

People sometimes act as though Theresa May was forced into this, or remained for so long out of a sense of duty. The reality seems far more banal. The prime minister was simply crippled by hubris from the start. As soon as she took power, senior officials reported that she haughtily dismissed their advice (and frequently their facts) on the grounds that she had negotiated an EU opt-out while home secretary, and they had not. She refused to concede a scrap of personal responsibility even when her deal was defeated over and over again, including by the largest margin in parliamentary history. Her response was always the same: blame MPs, blame the EU, and stick to the script that had already confounded her. Her most famous gaffe became her only abiding mantra: nothing would change. Other prime ministers had resigned for a tenth of the humiliation, but May seemed to convince herself she possessed both the political skills and parliamentary majority of Tony Blair. Sadly for her, nobody else could enter the elaborate make-believe world which had become her permanent cocoon.