To feel desperately sorry for Theresa May

[ferns99]

On a human level I just feel so sorry for her - she looks like she's aged so much and is apparently becoming quite unwell because of the immense stress she's under. To be continually ripped to shreds by the despicable ERG and so many others in the House of Commons is just awful - I don't know how she does it. A few times I've seen her looking like she's on the verge of tears. I wonder if she goes home every night and just sobs - I know I would.

It's sad as I think she would have made a decent PM if Brexit didn't exist.

YABU. TM instigated and drove the 'hostile environment' policy, with vans driving around telling people to go home, windrush etc. So much unnecessary pain and suffering. She drove it through cabinet. An Unreasonable level of anti immigration is what's driving her BREXIT, with people who have lived here for decades and brought up their children having to endure tortuous kafkaesque bureaucracy that is often literally impossible to complete. TM stood against cabinet on that too. She has happily torn families apart and caused untold suffering. Her lies and blankering on brexit are incompetent beyond belief. I have zero sympathy for her and wish she would just go.

Another here with sympathy - I think the job of executing Brexit is an impossible one. Whatever deal she had put before the EU they would have turned it down. Whatever deal she had negotiated from the EU the UK MPs would have disagreed with. There are no winners here. I think the EU have shown themselves to be a bunch of bullies who are ganging up on one of the strongest members of the group just to shore up their own ailing economies. If Germany were to apply to join the EU right now, they wouldn't meet the economic tests that they set when the likes of Poland wanted to join!

I would feel for any PM in Teresa May's position but I do feel that, discounting any previous actions she carried out in another job, that she's stuck this for longer than the likes of Johnson or Farage or Rees-Mogg would have done. And I do believe that she is being bullied by the EU, by UKMP's and also by Bercow. She has my admiration for sticking to what she signed up for although not for her clothes - someone please tell her that short waisted people don't look good in boxy and/or short jackets nipped in at the waist!

I can't feel any sympathy for her at all. At every turn she has put party before country. She is concerned only to keep the tory party together. Added to which she is authoritarian, xenophobic and completely lacking in statesmanship. She hasn't seemed to realise that whatever she gives the posh boys they will throw her under a bus (along with the rest of us) without a second thought.

"She hasn't seemed to realise that whatever she gives the posh boys they will throw her under a bus"

Imagine dealing with that lot day in day out. Shudder

And I do believe that she is being bullied by the EU, by UKMP's and also by Bercow

Your evidence for this?

Another here with sympathy - I think the job of executing Brexit is an impossible one

Fuck Brexit. I had no sympathy for her as Home Secretary - almost succeeding in dispossessing an entire generation that had only been a positive boon to the UK with her nasty racist illegal actions.

In fact if she had pulled Brexit off, she might have just reset the scales back to zero. The fact she not only hasn't, but hasn't due to her own flaws should double-damn her.

*When she was in the Home Office she pushed the "hostile environment" anti-immigration agenda which included sending around vans bearing the message of "go home".

Windrush.

The poor handling of the Grenfell aftermath when she didn't even bother to visit the area.

Continued austerity and the pushing ahead with UC despite knowing it's not fit for purpose.

Jumping into partnership with the DUP and thereby helping to continue the lack of abortion access for women in NI and the restrictions on same-sex marriage. Giving them £1 billion in bribes to prop up her government at the same time as telling people in desperate need that there is no magical money tree - she can find the fucking tree when it suits her though, can't she?*

All of this. Absolutely.

Of course there's no perfect Brexit. But she could have got on a lot better if she had engaged the other parties; they would have formed a consensus deal, whipped their MPs to vote it through, job done.

The LAST thing I want is Brexit; but imagine, for example, Nicola Sturgeon in charge of the deal. Or Hilary Benn. Keir Starmer. David Lammy. Almost anyone, in fact, would have taken a different, better approach.

Yes it’s easy to start to feel sorry for her on s human level. Then I remember the hostile environment and go home vans and it passes. It was her choice to stand for leadership. Her choice to trigger article 50 with absolutely no plan. Her choice to throw away her majority in a snap general election. Her choice to keep kicking the can down the road with Brexit rather than dealing with it. My only concern now is what’s going to replace her.

NOPE, i don't feel sorry for any politician especially a Tory, the tories make life hard for ordinary working people/families , benefit cuts, cuts for the disabled working families having to use food bank's, this is 2019 for god sake tories don't give a dot, won't lose any sleep over Theresa May

If your main worry about Brexit is people being big bad bullies, you should upgrade your level of understanding so that you hold a fully formed adult view of the world

Fuck sake, no wonder Leave won.

Agreed and I’d never vote Tory unless somebody held a gun to my head. Do just feel like she’s been lumbered in an impossible situation. Hameron fucked off as soon as things didn’t go his way and she’s still attempting to pick up the pieces. Reminds me of Brown when Blair pissed off.

outpinked I'm sure someone's going to correct me, but there's nothing wrong with a PM knowing that they've been in the job long enough, and Brown had been literally waiting to step into Blair's shoes. He knew he was the Prime Minister in waiting. Didn't he? Anyone can correct me, it's fine, I am no expert. But it looks like a totally different situation to me.

Theresa May is a liar. No sympathy here.

Nope. No sympathy whatsoever. She isn't struggling to make ends meet every month because the cost of living has increased so dramatically and the wages have stayed the same, her pay am sure has increased. She isn't panicking when her car breaks down, it's her only way to get kids to school and work and she has no money to fix it. These people have no idea how tough some people are getting it at the moment. She knew exactly what she was signing up for when she decided to run for PM. So no I 100% do not feel sorry for Theresa May!

Agreed and I’d never vote Tory unless somebody held a gun to my head.

They never do it to the strong, or those that stand up to them. It's the weak, the poor, the ill, the old, the disenfranchised, the despairing. That's who they hold the gun to. And the fact that all of those groupings are disproportionately women makes Tories inherently misogynistic to boot. What other political party could dream up a scheme where you need to prove rape to claim benefits. A policy Theresa May has never failed to support, by the way.

I know where my sorrow lies, and it's not with the people causing other peoples.

Normally with a PM, even if you don’t agree with everything you can point to some things they did that were good.

I cannot think of one single thing May has done that has been remotely successful. Every single decision she has made has been the wrong one.

Her policies as Home Secretary meant my family had less rights to be here in the U.K. than fucking animals. We went through hell because of her. She’s a stubborn, arrogant cunt that knew exactly what she was getting into. If she knew it was going to go tits up like it has done, then there’s no way she would have taken the job. I believe that she assumed she could turn it around and be celebrated and applauded. It’s actually an insult to her to make out as though she’s a poor little thing that’s a victim of some sort, dragged into this. She went into this with hope and ambition, eyes wide open. Half the reason Brexit is such a mess is because of her foolish arrogance and inflexibility. I hope she does cry into her pillow every night, she’s sending us all to hell in a handcart.

Yeah, that PM pension is just a pittance.

I cannot think of one single thing May has done that has been remotely successful. Every single decision she has made has been the wrong one.

To be fair, she did apologise for Windrush, and make it a top priority to ensure that people were immediately sorted out so they didn't have to worry, plus return the people that had already been expelled and reinstate all they had lost. So, there is some good done.

Oh, hang on, none of that happened, did it ? In fact, from memory, fuck all really happened - not even and admission of culpability, let alone a sorry.

As you were.

I don't feel particularly sorry for her, and with many of the things she did in the past she doesn't seem to be a particularly pleasant person. Nobody who takes pride in saying that they belong to the "Nasty Party" can be.

She DID preside over the build up to the Windrush scandal while she was Home Secretary. It just happened to come to a head and finally blow up once she had moved on to be Prime Minister, and Amber Rudd took the fall for it. Not saying that Amber Rudd was perfect, but it is clear that TM was the original architect of the debacle.

She has few diplomatic or interpersonal skills. She is stubborn and dogmatic rather than resilient. She isn't a great politician, and she has been poor as Prime Minister. I do think she looks ill and haggard, and I really can't see how she can possibly be enjoying her job. Each day must be pure frustration and hell. She hasn't really helped herself though with her "My way or the highway" approach rather than trying to get cross party consensus on anything.

She was also particularly unwise to trigger Article 50 at all without any feasible plan in place, and whilst remaining utterly clueless as to what to do after that.

Brexit is a poison chalice for whoever takes it on though.

Also, bear in mind that when we talk about how things haven't turned out too well for poor old Treeza, bear in mind she's dragging the entire country with her. She's not bet her families house, job and future on her actions. She's bet all of ours. And currently the wheel keeps coming up 0.

I actually do admire her. She has stuck around - unlike the men who got us into this situation - to get on with the job (with varying degrees or not of success) with health issues to boot. You can't say she's a slacker.

Nobody who takes pride in saying that they belong to the "Nasty Party" can be She told the Tories that they had to change. She didn't advocate being 'the Nasty Party' FFS.

Surely the main problem with her is that she invoked Article 50 so quickly, when she had no idea how Brexit would happen and without considering any options.

Everyone knew that David Cameron's problem (or one of the many problems he had) was that he gave us a referendum without considering what would happen if people voted in favour of it. Everyone knew that. Yet she fought her way to the PM role and then immediately invoked Article 50. That was crazy. Between the two of them, they have created this mess.

If she'd said, "Right, let's take our time now working out what kind of Brexit is acceptable to everyone" then we'd still have the fights but we wouldn't have had that looming deadline, which made every politician run around like a headless chicken, making terrible decisions.