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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

AIBU to feel a bit shit for TM?

282 replies

AndWhat · 12/12/2018 08:03

Imagine achieving your life dream of becoming PM, being left to organise a shitstorm and then a load of your staff telling you you’re shit at organising shit and you get voted out.
I don’t think anyone who was brought in to lead brexit following Cameron’s hash up would have done a decent job and yet all TM will be known for is failing to manage brexit!

OP posts:
bonbonours · 12/12/2018 09:02

Yes but if she stuck to her actual beliefs about EU, that the UK is better in (as shown by footage from 2016) she would have done what is best for the country and cancelled it instead of bleating on about the will of the people. Politician's job us do what is best for the country. She's not doing that.

ButteryParsnips · 12/12/2018 09:03

She'll go down as the worst PM in modern history

Still think Cameron gets this title. He didn't have to do any of this but did and was careless and stupid about it. How he can look in the mirror in the morning I don't know.

MarshaBradyo · 12/12/2018 09:05

Nope Cameron will

Slinking off from his own doing

Poodles1980 · 12/12/2018 09:05

While I feel very sorry for her, she got into bed with the snakes from the DUP and got bitten

ItsInTheSpoon · 12/12/2018 09:06

Who could have done any better? And who can now? There is nobody, in any party. I am amazed and impressed at her strength, and hope she holds on

AndThereSaw · 12/12/2018 09:07

I think she is an absolute legend. An extraordinary woman in the darkest of times. I mean her personally, not the policies btw.

She voted remain. The country listened to the blowhards and voted Leave. Yet none of the Brexiteers were willing to actually do it because, just like her, they knew that EU wasn't going to give us an easy out. No-one except the most naive voter actually thought this wasn't going to be a worse time for the UK. Things will stabilize in time, but the immediate aftermath of the vote and Brexit itself were always going to be dreadful.

So she picks up the mantle and goes to the EU: a whole continent who think we're a bunch of fecking idiots and racists, and tries to negotiate a deal. And then, after months of negotiation, she comes back to parliament and some of them go:
'no, we want more concessions from Europe' as if she hasn't tried for that, and some of them go
'we want all the advantages of eu membership but none of the disadvantages' which is clearly insane, and some go
'Meh, lets hold out long enough that we have a hard Brexit because we don't like those forriners anyway and we have no understanding of how deeply entwined our laws, business, education, medicine, banking, in fact every damn thing are with the EU' which I think was the position of the average voter on referendum day.
She has been extraordinary. I really hope that all this last minute backstabbing ends in another vote and we don't leave, and am very sorry that her reputation has been torn down by those on all sides for their own ends. I'm bloody glad she's done it though.

LaurieMarlow · 12/12/2018 09:07

Still think Cameron gets this title.

One hundred percent. Theresa got dealt a terrible hand as PM. Cameron didn't.

DriveAnIceCreamVan · 12/12/2018 09:08

Fucking DUP gave us a hard Brexit, most of NI would accept a border down the Irish sea.

scarbados · 12/12/2018 09:08

She knew she was gratefully accepting a poisoned chalice when she accepted the leadership. Why else did she think no-one else had wanted it? She was either stupid enough to take on what she knew was going to be impossible or arrogant enough to think she could succeed. No sympathy for her.

MarshaBradyo · 12/12/2018 09:09

They all think they can do better because they are arrogant and cowardly

DeepanKrispanEven · 12/12/2018 09:09

AndThereSaw, do you really think her last election campaign was the campaign of an "absolute legend"? Or indeed that the decision to hold an election at all was ever remotely sensible?

AdamNichol · 12/12/2018 09:10

I'm no fan of Cameron, but a lot of what happened in his time seems to have been forgotten. The 3 big parties were all internally divided, but publicly pro-EU. UKIP arose as a party dedicated to demanding a referendum on the issue of EU membership alone. By 2015, they were taking 12% of the public vote - nearly half of what either Con or Lab were pulling. Had Cameron continued to deny the public the option of the referendum, the fall out would have become untenable. Cameron simply took us straight to the inevitable finish line - the referendum was going to come one way or another. Whether he did enough to campaign for remain.......

Poodles1980 · 12/12/2018 09:10

I think you will find most people from NI wanted to remain in the EU

Thesnobbymiddleclassone · 12/12/2018 09:11

She was thrown in with an impossible task after David Cameron left.

Changing PM now is just such a bad idea. It's an important stage for Brexit and completely changing who can negotiate and so on is just going to mess that up further.

Bombardier25966 · 12/12/2018 09:12

@DeepanKrispanEven Almost like she wanted to lose the election and then they could blame Labour for the shit shower that is Brexit.

Bombardier25966 · 12/12/2018 09:13

She was thrown in with an impossible task after David Cameron left.

She put herself forward for the job. She knew exactly what she was doing.

2cats2many · 12/12/2018 09:13

I have no sympathy for her. She has years of experience in politics and knew exactly what she was getting in to when she took job. In my view, she comes across as really blinkered and stubborn, not good qualities to have when trying to build consensus around a difficult issue.

juneau · 12/12/2018 09:14

I agree OP. She's done the very best she could with this poison chalice that no one else wanted to take. She didn't want Brexit, didn't campaign for it, didn't vote for it (I'm assuming), and yet she has tried her best to come up with a deal that is acceptable to both the EU and the UK. And what thanks does she get? Her party stabbing her in the back, her own ministers stabbing her in the back and, at the last minute, when she's finally hashed out a deal, them all deserting her and now actively trying to oust her. They're the most despicable, treacherous bunch of self-serving twunts I've ever seen (and that's saying something when it comes to politics).

LaurieMarlow · 12/12/2018 09:14

she got into bed with the snakes from the DUP and got bitten

I don't feel sorry for her over this at all.

She chose to get into bed with then to save her ass from a situation entirely of her own making.

The DUP then behaved exactly as everyone expected them to. Say what you like about them, they aren't difficult to read.

Orchardgreen · 12/12/2018 09:15

She looks exhausted. I guess there may have been a few tears behind the door.

LittleSF · 12/12/2018 09:15

While I personally have some sympathy it's tempered by the fact that (a) she invoked Article 50 when there was no pressure on her to do so, (b) her Red Lines speech made it impossible for the UK to stay in the Customs Union and/or Single Market which, polls have shown, a lot of people who voted Leave would have been happy with, and (c) she should have had that vote yesterday! Why didn't she hold her nerve - have the vote, lose it, call a general election and let the people decide it as a de facto referendum on her deal.

It's an utter disaster. I can't see her surviving this.

bellinisurge · 12/12/2018 09:15

Both sympathise and despise. I agree with pp about her getting into bed with those snakes.

DeepanKrispanEven · 12/12/2018 09:16

Had Cameron continued to deny the public the option of the referendum, the fall out would have become untenable

But any experienced politician with half a brain would have ensured a sensible referendum question requiring a higher majority, and/or a second vote. They would also have run a better campaign and done more to expose and/or prevent the blatant criminality in the Leave campaign, including making provision for that sort of conduct to nullify the vote.

LMW1990 · 12/12/2018 09:16

To all those saying that she knew what she was accepting when she took the role on, someone had to! What was the alternative? If absolutely no one wanted to take on the job, what would happen then? Is it really so arrogant to realise to that the job had to be done (because the coward who asked for the vote in the first place couldn't see it through)? The country - as people have pointed out time and time again - voted leave. That had to be then implemented somehow.

AndThereSaw · 12/12/2018 09:17

Poodles1980
I think you will find that most people from the UK as a whole wanted to remain in the EU! The idea of leaving was so ridiculous that loads of people didn't bother voting. We reap what they sowed.