There are mounting reports of people within the parliamentary Conservative Party at the end of their tether with Theresa May's premiership and her "handling" of government.
The symbolism of Theresa May's tenure is not good, to say the least. She has presided over a mounting number of scandals that have cost her ministers their jobs. Meanwhile, there are ministers who ought to have been sacked, and ordinarily would have been sacked, but haven't. While the economy is meant to be at its highest level of employment for years, in every other sense, large parts the country look like they're falling apart. From councils unable to pay for basic services, massive staff cutbacks all across the public sector (including HMRC), the mechanics of the state seem to be seizing up.or disintegrating.
From the shocking rise in rough sleeping and homelessness, to the shockingly-inhumane state of much rental property, the country is simply "not fit for purpose" for much of its own population; it's a struggle to simply exist from day to day. Meanwhile, in London the property bubble is in its own unreality, where there are now more and more luxury tower blocks being built when there isn't even enough demand for what is already there. This is an economy that is in denial, where those building luxury pads didn't seem to even notice or care that the property was built not as an asset to be used but as just a speculative tool to be sold on again before it was even finished. It is another example of the "Ponzi scheme" mentality that appears to exist in the minds of many of the rich and powerful that run the country, from the now-bankrupt Carillion to London property builders who seem to be living on borrowed time.
From the symbolism of MPs refusing to leave a parliament building that is unsafe and no longer fit for purpose, to the symbolism of a "zombie" Prime Minister too paralyzed by circumstances and her own neuroses to do or change anything, an atmosphere of "Gothic Horror" seems to seep over the halls of government. And this is all without even mentioning the ongoing train-wreck that is Brexit.
"Weak and dithering" versus "mean and dictatorial"?
Presiding over all of this is Theresa May. It could be argued that she happened to become Prime Minister at the wrong time. Her pallor and demeanor make it more apt to call her "Theresa Gray", a monochrome personality more in tune with the dour 1950s, while the various flaws in her personality give that moniker an extra-Gothic symbolism. Yes, she inherited Brexit. Yes, she inherited the same economic model as Cameron and Osborne that has seen food banks and zero-hours contracts soar. Yes, she inherited the same broken housing market with the same property bubble. And all those problems are now bit by bit coming home to roost.
However, her personality is making all of those problems worse, either through inaction, intransigence or incompetence. In some ways, it could be argued that she has something of a "split personality". A recent commentator talked about her in relation to the "Wizard Of Oz" - being a pitiful nobody behind an imposing front - and that analogy makes a lot of sense. Her tenure at the Home Office (though in my view this antagonistic agency ought to be re-named the "Hate Office") was marked by her making a name for herself through highly-visible acts of meanness, from her poor relationship with the police, to blaming underlings for immigration and border problems, to the "Go Home" vans. This, and her loyalty to Cameron, was what kept in place until 2016.
It was her role as Home Secretary that made us see the "mean and dictatorial" side to her personality. As she was rarely put in a position that challenged this persona, by the time Cameron resigned, this all fed into an impression among some that this meant she was also "strong and stable". It was here where the Thatcher comparisons started.
This "Wizard Of Oz" perception continued up to the election campaign. Supported by Nick Timothy - known by his detractors as "Rasputin" - and Fiona Hill (who both seemed to run the show behind the scenes), it seemed to bring out the more unpleasant aspects to May's personality, running the government as a near-dictatorial personality cult. Of course, this is all very easy when someone's status is unchallenged, like May's was in the Home Office.
It was the disastrous campaign of the snap election that she called that changed all that. "Strong and stable" suddenly became "weak and wobbly". The "Wizard Of Oz" had had the curtain pulled down before him (or rather, her). Under pressure for the first real time in the public sphere, May crumpled.
Since then, May's tenure has all been about "damage limitation", to little real effect. Although she often seems to find the time to find her malevolent inner "Mrs Hyde" when at PMQs, (such as by attacking Corbyn's sincerity or mocking his style of politics, or by disseminating a barrage of linguistic nonsense to deflect from her government's failings) she is no longer really "running the country".
Thanks to her government now being reliant on the whims of Brexiteers in her party, "Brexit" is really the only thing the government is focused on; and even on that, no-one can agree. So in this sense, there isn't really a functioning "government" of the meaning of the word at all. Without a majority, and refusing on principle to compromise with the opposition, the government can not do anything, except "Brexit". And as already said, on "Brexit" no-one had the first clue what they are doing.
Because she lost the election and her party's majority, she is the "prisoner of Downing Street", hostage to the will of the personalities in the cabinet and the wider party. She has no moral authority. All that is left is the weak and dithering "Dr Jekyll" aspect to her personality: the persona with no sense of purpose, indecisive, ill at ease, insecure, paralysed by self-doubt. This is the worst type of persona to have in a national leader at any time; at this current time, with Brexit and a burgeoning host of other domestic issues that have been left to fester, it is catastrophic . When the main feeling towards her that those who meet her get is one of of pity, it is a terrible indictment on the mental state of the Prime Minister.
In this sense, the (perhaps harsh-sounding) "Jekyll and Hyde" analogy is there more to reflect the apparently contrasting manifestations of May's ego; it is not there to accuse May of being some kind of abomination. From a psychological perspective, the mean and dictatorial "Mrs Hyde" part of her personality seems to be the coldly-inhuman and narcissistic public persona she has often exhibited, and is the one that made her Prime Minister; the "Dr Jekyll" part of her seems to be the fragile and fraught "inner child" inside her, where her humanity is reflected only in the sense of it demonstrating her frailties.
In order for her to have success in her political career, then, she may have had to repress the more humane aspects of her ego; in the dog-eat-dog, masculine-led world of politics, this makes some practical sense, although it is still an indictment of a pervasively-toxic psychology within the system. Her "Nasty Party" speech early in her parliamentary career, that marked as appearing as a "compassionate conservative", was long forgotten by the time she had become an antagonistic Home Secretary. Unfortunately, her own neuroses could not hide the fact that she lacked the intellectual grasp and the sharpness of mind to tackle the (in her own words) "burning issues" of the country. As a result of this, her own incompetence as premier that had been been initially masked by a sycophantic and loyal coterie began to desert her once it was clear that she was incapable of changing.
In this way, the much-mocked "running in wheat fields" story actually reflects a lot on May's self-image: the child who never did anything wrong becoming the Prime Minister who could not do anything right. She has become a truly tragic political figure, coming to symbolise all that is wrong with how the country is run, and everyone can see it. It's hard to know if her stubborn refusal to stand down is through some twisted sense of "duty" to her party, or through a "head-in-the-sand" inability to deal with the forlorn reality of her position.
The fact that the country feels as though it's slowly falling apart is symbolised by this Gothic mood music coming from Downing Street. If the country is slowly falling apart, it's because no-one is running the show: a powerless national leader unable to focus or make decisions on anything, reliant on a "freak show" of personalities around her. Through either lack of thought to the country or from lack of drive from within, this has become a live-action horror show.
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