Since usurping power on the blood and thunder of anti-immigrant rhetoric and dead refugees, Theresa May has been accused by her Conservative colleague Ken Clarke of running ‘a government without policies’. And with Brexit dominating the discussion but cannily evading all scrutiny, it remains for May to go on running her government with neither principles nor policies in sight.
When you have nothing meaningful to say and anyway refuse to say anything – on the dubious pretence that it would only damage the country if you were forced to explain or discuss or commit – it is hard to produce worthwhile speeches. Instead you wind up regurgitating the same old soundbites, perfectly content in your own vortex of vacuousness.
This makes it easy to construct a sort of template for every speech which Theresa May gives. Whether addressing business leaders on the world stage or postulating in parliament, she is always playing to a small audience with the aim of addressing some of its social and economic, but most of all its virulently nationalist concerns. The audience can afford to be small because thanks to May and her Tory cohorts, UKIP, a feeble opposition, and an overwhelmingly complicit media, Britain has lurched so far to the right that the Conservatives now more than ever seem the inevitable party of power.
The essence of every May speech is the idea that under her leadership, Britain will ‘Take back control of our borders’. This is in spite of the fact that the majority of Britain’s immigrants come from outside of the European Union, and therefore are already ‘controlled’; regardless of the need for migrant labour and diversity of culture; and handily ignores the truth that European migrants are the only group in British society who collectively contribute to the economy.
As a sort of buttress to the above point which readily tends towards xenophobia and racism, May also usually adds that we will ‘Take back control of our laws’. The European Union has little direct influence on our laws when it comes to taxation, welfare, healthcare, criminal law, or education, and in the realm of defence we are beholden to NATO. Our head of state sits on the European Council, our government nominates a European Commissioner, and every five years we elect our Members of European Parliament. Thankfully for May most ardent Brexiters ignore all of this, but they do know that the pesky EU stops us taking our ferrets on holiday, demands votes for prisoners, and worst of all meddles with the shape of bananas.
With control well and truly won and all authority centred in her person, May then pledges to make Britain ‘A country that works for all, not just the privileged few’. Quite how this and her purported fondness for ‘social justice’ tally with her support for years of Conservative austerity and welfare cuts, which have targeted the poor and disabled; with stagnant wages; with the return of grammar schools; with hollow rhetoric concerning boardroom reform amid proposed tax cuts for big businesses; with her incessant abuse of foreign nationals – none of this is quite clear.
But she will attempt to advance the point anyway with a few timely attacks on the theme of ‘The people left behind by globalisation’. There’s no suggestion of building a brighter, wealthier, more modern and more content workforce. Instead this is a populist gambit of the sort popularised by Donald Trump, which once again demonises foreigners, and conjures shady images of a global – and worse still, intellectual – elite. At the same time May is happy to send Liam Fox gallivanting around the world extolling the virtues of free trade while surely pushing behind the scenes for self-enriching and self-aggrandising arms deals.
That about does it – a few grand but deceptive phrases, lacking in real substance, which can be filled out with some guff about ‘challenging times’ but ‘historic opportunities’, our ‘obligations as citizens’ which all too often appear one-sided, a few jabs at Labour as she pretends to inhabit the ‘centre ground’, and at the Scottish National Party too as she absurdly emphasises the value of ‘union’. She’ll continually preface her empty words with ‘Let me be clear…’, knowing that few people bother listening to the end of the sentence, and the opening at least sounds confident, assertive, straightforward, and sincere.
