Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has summed up Prime Minister Theresa May’s legacy on her last day as party leader: “failure”.
Asked on Good Morning Britain what he thought Prime Minister May’s legacy would be, the Brexit architect said simply: “Failure. Failure.”
“It was a huge mistake from the very start to put somebody in as prime minister who voted Remain.
“To deliver Brexit, you’ve got to believe in it, because you have got to stand up against many in the political class, and I am afraid she just never believed in it.
“It was one of her former advisers who said a ‘Theresa May Brexit was about damage limitation’ – as opposed to seizing an opportunity. I think that, in many ways, sums up the last couple of years.”
Mr Farage’s comments came before he trolled Mrs May by delivering a letter to Number 10 containing a number of Brexit demands, including he and his party be given a seat at the negotiating table.
Prime Minister May announced a fortnight ago that she would be stepping down on Friday the 7th of June as Conservative Party leader.
While in the future historians may debate whether Mrs May’s tenure as prime minister was a failure, here is a selection of her political low-lights in the past two years, ten months, and 25 days that may indicate the general tenor of her time in office:
- Losing the Conservative majority in the House of Commons after calling a snap General Election in 2017.
- Losing 1,334 councillors in the May 2019 local elections, resulting in the party’s worst local election result in 24 years.
- The Conservative Party coming in fifth place in the May 2019 European Parliament elections, in what was described as the worst election result in the party’s 185-year history.
- While surviving a party confidence vote, May was subjected to attempts by her own MPs to change party rules to run another within the same year.
- Conservative grassroots also sought to trigger their own confidence vote for the first time in the party’s history.
- Failing to pass her unpopular, EU-approved withdrawal agreement in the House of Commons three times — the third time occurring on the day the UK was originally scheduled to leave the EU.
- Instead of reaching out to party Brexiteers after her deal failed for a third time, the prime minister instead invited the leader of the opposition, known Marxist Jeremy Corbyn, to the negotiating table.
- Thirty-six ministers from both sides of the Brexit divide had resigned from May’s Cabinet since April 2018.
- Delaying Brexit twice — in the end, to October 31st — after promising 108 times that the UK would leave the EU on March 29th.