The vicar’s daughter
The musty silence of a parish church, the genteel atmosphere of a country vicarage and the carefree days in a village school may not seem like the ideal preparation for the raucous, aggressive political battleground that is Prime Minister’s Questions. Yet it was this very background that led to my interest in politics and ultimately to me occupying 10 Downing Street.
Perhaps the background of growing up as a vicar’s daughter is not so far removed from the requirements of being a senior politician as it might at first seem. As a child of the vicarage, you are not just yourself, and you are not just seen as representing your parents (although when your father is the local vicar, that is more significant than it is for most children). Like it or not, you are also a representative of a wider body — the Church.
My father was always speaking in public through his sermons. I learnt a lot from him about that, but I also took a lesson from my mother. If his sermon went beyond ten minutes, there would be questions asked at lunch in the vicarage. I can’t claim to only ever speak for ten minutes, but it does remind me of the importance of knowing the message you want to give, keeping your remarks short and your audience engaged.
It is a great sadness to me that neither of my parents lived to see me elected to Parliament, let alone occupying the highest elected office in the land. Indeed, they didn’t even see me elected to Merton Council, which included Wimbledon, where my paternal great-grandfather had been an alderman.
Cricket — it’s political
As an only child, I was in some ways treated as an adult. Certainly, I was urged to take an interest in what was going on beyond our home in the country and the world, and I was encouraged to argue and debate with my parents, particularly my father. But don’t get the wrong idea. This wasn’t all about world affairs. There were hard-fought arguments about many topics — perhaps especially about cricket, above all about who was England’s best opening batsman. My father, being a Surrey supporter, was adamant that it was John Edrich. I couldn’t agree, and argued the case vociferously for Geoffrey Boycott. My father cited Edrich’s strokeplay. I argued for Boycott’s dogged determination and capacity to occupy the crease thanks to his ability to play with a straight bat. Later in life, I was to cite these characteristics not just as the reason for valuing Geoffrey Boycott’s approach to cricket, but also as being useful for a politician.
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So argument and debate were a regular part of my upbringing. My mother sometimes worried that this happened too much, but my father was always very willing to debate with me. In fact, I used to get rather loud when I was putting my case, and time after time my father would say, “No need to shout. You are not addressing a public meeting.” Little did he know!
I always point out that, unlike William Hague, I didn’t read Hansard under the bedclothes. I was more likely to have the radio tuned to Test Match Special from some overseas tour. Indeed, that was how I heard of John Snow’s 7 for 49 against the West Indies. A major moment for clergy children. (The Sussex and England bowler’s father was the vicar of Bognor Regis.)
● Exclusive interview: Theresa May — Boris, Brexit and me
Me, myself and ‘Maybot’
At a young age, it was incumbent on me to consider how my words and actions reflected not just on me but on others. This has stayed with me throughout my life and political career. There were times when I stopped myself from making a funny aside or what I thought was a humorous quip because it could have been taken out of context. And so, while I consider it has stood me in good stead, in today’s world of social media, rolling TV news and personality politics, it has meant that I have been seen as being too careful with my words, not sufficiently willing to open up, robotic and uninteresting.
Despite being portrayed as having these characteristics, I still try to be very careful with what I say today. Old habits die hard, but more than that, being careless in speech can cause deep trouble for others. This natural inclination to hold my tongue served me well when I was Home Secretary and when I was PM. But it takes personal restraint. I remember one occasion when I was Home Secretary when I had a conversation with another senior colleague. There was a counter-terrorism story in the papers, and we were being asked a certain question about the individuals concerned. We knew the answer but for security reasons could not divulge it. My colleague wanted to do so, or at least to give an answer that gave a strong hint. When I said no, he could not do so his response was that not doing so would make him look stupid. I’m not sorry to say that my answer was, “So look stupid then.”
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#ParliamentToo
While reflecting on my time in the Home Office and No 10, I realised what had been in the back of my mind for quite a while: namely that there was a thread running through many of the issues I had dealt with. That thread is the abuse of power exhibited so often in the way the institutions of the state, and those who work within them, put themselves first and the people they are there to serve second.
It is shocking, but right, to start with the abuse of power at the heart of our democracy in Parliament. In a democracy, those who have been elected exercise power over people’s lives. This should be reflected in the atmosphere in Parliament, where the serious nature of the decisions being taken and the impact they have on the day-to-day lives of the people should lead those involved to adopt a careful and considered approach to exercising their power.
Sadly, the evidence of recent years has been that the exercise of power by MPs in their dealings with their own staff and with the staff of the House of Commons, and indeed among the staff themselves, has been the opposite of careful. It has shown the abuse of power at its worst.
In early 2022 it was reported that since 2018, there had been 56 allegations against MPs, including some against Cabinet ministers.
While all these issues were being brought to the surface, reports written, policies revised and new structures established, the person who more than any other is there to ensure good behaviour in the way the Commons conducts its business — the former Speaker, John Bercow — was himself subjecting staff to appalling bullying.
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It is worth just considering briefly those who did finally come forward in relation to John Bercow’s conduct towards them. These were not junior staff unable to deal with a senior figure. They were not shrinking violets. They were senior staff who had given years of service to Parliament and were well able to deal with difficult MPs. Two were employed as Secretary to the Speaker, one of whom was a former naval captain. The third was the Clerk of the House — the Corporate Officer of the House and its principal constitutional adviser.
The charge sheet for John Bercow was that he was not just a bully but also a serial liar. We have a right to expect better from the House of Commons, although arguably he was not the only MP to whom that description could be applied.
So why is it that we see these abuses of power taking place? The answer is also depressing. It is that too many in Parliament feel that they are special, different from mere mortals doing a job in any other workplace. I remember having an argument in the Members’ Tea Room years ago with a long-standing MP who had heard me refer to being an MP as a job. It wasn’t a job, he said, because we had been elected.
Being an MP is a job, and Parliament, impressive a building though it is and important though it is for the work done within its walls, is a workplace. It may be a workplace like no other. The process by which MPs get their jobs may be different from the way most people get theirs. But contrary to the views of many, being elected doesn’t make MPs a breed apart to whom the normal rules of human behaviour in the workplace do not apply. We expect others to behave in a certain way in their places of work. Indeed, we sometimes legislate for that. We should not think that those rules do not apply to us.
Brexit revisited
When I am asked what I want the legacy of my time in government to be, I say I would like it to be the legislation for net zero emissions by 2050, or the Modern Slavery Act. When I say that, I know in my heart of hearts that the political reality is that my premiership will always be seen in the context of Brexit and my failure to get a deal through the House of Commons.
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The failure to get the deal my government struck with the EU through the House of Commons was due in large part to the misuse of power — too often, it was used to satisfy personal interests rather than the overall national interest.
Aha! I hear you exclaim — she’s trying to blame others for her own mistakes. I am not. What I want to do is to show how the power plays in Parliament contributed to the stalemate that ensued until it was broken by the general election of 2019. I could have made some different decisions that might have helped my cause. I also should have realised that just because some Conservative MPs had campaigned for many years to leave the EU, it didn’t mean they would accept a deal to leave that was different from their favoured option. Perhaps I should also have appreciated that it didn’t mean they would accept a deal negotiated by, and presented to them by, someone who had voted to remain.
At its heart, the problem was that both sides of the argument — the Brexiteers and the Remainers — felt they had the power to achieve their desired outcome regardless of its impact on the country. Despite what individual MPs might now claim, it became a battle of the tribes rather than a battle for the best interests of the United Kingdom.
Before I explore that in detail, however, I must talk about what I believe was the greatest abuse of power during this whole process. An abuse of power that came from what should have been the most unlikely source — the very person above all others who should be absolutely neutral in their work, the Speaker of the House of Commons.
I have now served under four Speakers. Until John Bercow took office, I had never seen someone so blatantly abuse the power they held as Speaker to promote a particular view.
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Over and over again, but particularly in the latter days of my administration, it seemed clear to me that John Bercow was trying to thwart the delivery of Brexit. He seemed so clearly to be following his personal agenda, and the impression was that he was working with those who favoured a second referendum and against the policy of the government. This was manifested in different ways. He reinterpreted Standing Orders. He ruled that amendments could not be laid when the rules should have allowed them to be put down. He overrode the long-standing convention that the government determined the business of the House. Crucially, just when the Democratic Unionist Party had indicated privately that they would vote with the government, thus enabling the deal to be agreed by the House of Commons, the Speaker ruled that he could not accept another vote on the deal. As a result, the debate was not allowed and no vote took place at that time. At that point, I am certain that he scuppered the Brexit deal.
As a result, the carefully crafted Withdrawal Agreement unwound and was to be no more. Had the debate been held, and had the vote been taken with the DUP voting with the government, there was every prospect that we would have delivered an earlier exit from the EU, maintained better relations with our European partners and, above all, delivered an agreement which would have been more beneficial for Northern Ireland and hence for the future integrity of the UK than the one that Boris Johnson signed.
John Bercow accepted the Opposition’s tactic of using their Opposition Day debates to put down motions for a Humble Address to be sent to Her Majesty the Queen on topic after topic designed only to thwart the government. A Humble Address is a communication from the House to the monarch. Its most frequent use is after the debate on the monarch’s speech at the opening session of Parliament, when a Humble Address is sent to the monarch thanking them for their speech. During my premiership, the Opposition used this procedure on a number of occasions to petition the Queen to require the government to take certain action. It meant bringing the Queen into political matters. And when the government chose not to play ball with these motions, the Speaker threatened to hold ministers in contempt of Parliament.
This use of the Humble Address was not just an affront to parliamentary procedure, it also involved Her Majesty in ongoing political debates in a way which rode roughshod over the accepted lines between the role of the elected House and the constitutional monarch. In my view, this was completely unacceptable. Regrettably, it is a mechanism that has come to be an accepted part of the Opposition’s armoury.
Arguably, this set a precedent which was later reflected in the decision by Boris Johnson’s government to prorogue Parliament in August 2019, a move which required the monarch’s acceptance. That prorogation, designed to stop all parliamentary business, was of course later found to be unlawful by the Supreme Court.
This was not the first time Brexiteers had suggested prorogation. As noted earlier, apart from a limited number of items, such as business determined by the Backbench Business Committee, business of the House of Commons each day is decided by the government. Following the 2017 election, although the Conservatives had more MPs than any other party, I did not have an overall majority. I was able to form a government because of an agreement with the members of the Democratic Unionist Party in Parliament. This meant that obtaining a majority in the Commons on any vote was difficult. These difficult numbers emboldened Remainers who wanted to bring forward motions and indeed legislation that would enable them to require the government to take a particular position in the Brexit negotiations. They were desperately keen to use Parliament to stop a no-deal Brexit. This was, of course, opposed by the Brexiteers, and so earlier in 2019, Jacob Rees-Mogg, a leading Brexiteer, suggested to me that the way through this was to ask Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament, thus removing the opportunity for such business to be brought forward. I refused.
It was also suggested to me by the same source that, if the Remainers did pass a bill that the Brexiteers didn’t like, I should ask Her Majesty not to give it Royal Assent. Again, I refused. I resisted both of these proposals, not just because of the implications for the role of Parliament, but mainly because of my firm belief that it would have been unthinkable to bring the monarch into these matters.
By sanctioning the idea of prorogation, the hard-line Brexiteers were taking a sledgehammer to the British constitution.
Perhaps what I find most shocking about John Bercow’s approach is that the Speaker’s role is to uphold democracy. Yet here was a Speaker who, it seemed to me, was deliberately using his power in a way that favoured those who wanted to try to overturn the democratic will of the people. There is no doubt that for many people, any faith they had in Parliament was being shattered by the attempts by MPs to overturn the result of the referendum. Throughout the Brexit debate, there were too many parliamentarians, holding their positions through the democratic will of the people, who worked tirelessly to try to overturn the will of the people, and I believe that John Bercow was key among them.
Let down by Labour
Her Majesty’s Official Opposition had the power, because of the numbers in the Commons, to deliver Brexit by supporting the government’s position or even by abstaining on key votes. They chose to abuse their power by putting party politics first and the interests of the country second. At every stage, they chose to frustrate Brexit and, as a result, they paid the price at the ballot box. There were some Labour MPs who spoke up to support Brexit, but they too paid the price at the election. One of the most vocal was Caroline Flint, who consistently and bravely challenged her front bench and at times voted with the government. But arguing that the result of the referendum should be respected didn’t prevent her from being caught up in the move by Leave-supporting Labour voters to insist on Brexit through the ballot box, and she was carried away by the tide that swept out so many Labour MPs.
There was an opportunity for Labour to work with the government and show the country that politicians could put aside their party-political labels for the greater good. For decades, Jeremy Corbyn had argued against EU imperialism, and Labour had promised in the 2017 general election to respect the outcome of the referendum. But in the end, Labour were caught between Jeremy Corbyn, who couldn’t bear to do a deal with the Conservatives, and Keir Starmer, who was playing to those in the Labour Party who wanted a second referendum. I leave it to the reader to decide whether the latter took that stance purely through conviction or with an eye on his own leadership ambitions.
When push came to shove, I was willing to compromise in order to deliver Brexit. Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party were not.
© Theresa May 2023. Extracted from The Abuse of Power: Confronting Injustice in Public Life by Theresa May, to be published by Headline on September 14 at £25. To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk or call 020 3176 2935. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Theresa May will be in conversation with Richard Coles at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London SE1, on September 14. There is a limited allocation of tickets for Times+ members. To enter the ballot for a chance to attend in person, visit mytimesplus.co.uk/events
