Who is Theresa May (profile and interview)

Theresa May doesn't
like to be rushed.
She's happy to hide from public
view, not afraid of long periods
of political silence.
She's something of an enigma,
even to those who've
known her for years.
Ambitious - but for what?
Made a gift to us the body and
blood...
This would've been a regular view
the young Theresa May
had of her father.
She was the only child
of the late Rev Hubert Brasier,
vicar at this Oxfordshire church
for 11 years.
At Oxford University,
she met Alicia Collinson
and her husband Damian Green,
now in her Cabinet.
That was my cartoon of Theresa in
charge of the punt, popping the
champagne corks.
They all attended at
a jokey debating society.
She was very funny.
Some people will
struggle to imagine Theresa May in
stand-up.
Well, they might, but
that's what she did.
She saved her serious speeches
for the Oxford Union debates.
She was seriously ambitious.
Over breakfast one day she such
wanted to be Prime Minister.
At
university?
The first term, sometime
in the autumn of 1970. White what
drove her, do you think why did she
want to be Prime Minister? She
wanted to change things, it's very
obvious, even then.
To change what,
do you think?
The socialism that one
was facing.
Push back socialism?
Yes, and there was an awful lot of
that about.
For some, the biggest motivator
is a tribal loyalty to a party whose
name is hidden from view in this
election, but whose interests
she is passionate about.
She's completely a creation
of the Conservative party.
In the way her predecessors were
not. She joined it before she went
to university. She's been a local
councillor. She married another Tory
activist.
It's the right decision,
it's in the national interest. And
that's what this election is about.
She is much more partisan than the
sort of slightly headmistress
demeanour suggests. She is a highly
partisan politician.
Nick Clegg says he doesn't recognise
Theresa May from her slogans she's
repeating remorselessly.
Appearances deceive. She is being
puffed up by the Gregorian God and
the right-wing press, like Boadicea
figure, she is having qualities of
decisiveness conferred upon her by
her supporters in the press.
You
didn't see them?
My experience was
not always that.
We deliver the
certainty that strong and stable
leadership can give. And that's what
leadership looks like.
If you ask
me, is she the most decisive
politician I've worked with, I would
put her quite down the league table
of decisiveness.
At Oxford, it
wasn't politics she studied, but
geography.
This is something I found
in a box. From the very beginning of
our time at Oxford. It is
instructive, because it was all
about gathering evidence, gathering
your own evidence.
Rainfall,
temperatures.
We have got data here,
we have got the raw data.
Again we
are talking about rainfall and
temperatures.
This is all logged by
Theresa and ask. We had thunder and
Theresa and ask. We had thunder and
lightning sometimes so that was
good, the rest of the time it was a
bit dull.
Is this an echo of the
person you know now?
It is evidence,
we were taught, don't take someone
else's data. And I think this is a
very early indication of what she
was like.
Her critics in government say
with Theresa May there's sometimes
too much of the weather logging,
getting bogged down in the detail.
And a wariness of challenge
from Whitehall officials.
She is methodical, she is quite
technocratic, she is quite
managerial. I think she thrives in
environments where she is pulling
the levers.
It is a government of
intense central control. Her and
Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill really
have concentrated power in Downing
Street to an extraordinary degree.
Easy to say that only want from
government is for it to get out of
the way but change has to come. It's
time to remember the good that
government can do.
Theresa May and her aides
promote energy price caps,
intervening on executive pay -
they argue the post-Thatcher
anti-state Tory reflex
got out of hand.
But the reforms unveiled
in her first 10 months
in office haven't matched
the revolutionary talk.
And change has got to come and this
party is going to make it.
Her childhood hero was
Geoffrey Boycott, the master
of long, uneventful innings.
And Brexit aside, is that
what a victory would bring?
For most of the time she looks like
Geoff Boycott, inching her way
forward very slowly, clocking up
single after single act and
attrition in the low rate but every
now and again, shall suddenly swing
the bat and go for it.
I have just
chaired a meeting of the cabinet
where we agreed that the government
should call a general election.
We
should get used to this very
cautious person who inches forward,
suddenly making a sudden lunch for
whatever she wants to seize.
A display of unity today,
but Theresa May's aides have blamed
the Treasury for holding back reform
and many think he
could lose his job.
Prime Minister, can you give us an
endorsement of the Chancellor?
Very happy to do so! As Phillips is,
we have worked together over the
years, for many years, longer than
we would care to identify, I think.
That is an age-related comment,
nothing else, in case you try to
read anything into that!
Mocking or crossing
Theresa May is not somehing
you should do lightly.
Five years ago the Police
Federation made her stand
in front of this sign.
And they asked if they believed
Theresa May on police pay.
Put your
hand up if you agree. Secretary,
even you didn't put your hand up!
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you.
Three years later she
was back with this.
If you do not change of your own
accord, we will impose change on
you.
Many think her policies are all too
often shaped by loathing
for the clique that preceded her.
Their breezy confidence
and condescension drive her
to unpick what they put in place.
She feels that there was a
gang of intellectually
self-confident types, the Prime
Minister himself, David Cameron,
Chancellor George Osborne, she was
excluded from that and she didn't
like it. That's true, isn't it?
And
things.
She loved it?
No. This has
been a view that many commentators
have put forward and it doesn't
chime with my understanding or our
recollection of our time together.
There was a club and she was not in
it and she was aware of that and
always felt her position precarious.
I don't think so.
Extraordinary bristling suspicion of
the David Cameron regime that made
her Home Secretary, gave her a great
office of state came from this
difference of character. When she
says that politics is not a game,
who is not aimed at? Aimed at the
preceding readership.
The persona
now is something of a stern
headmistress. That is what the
nation is meant to see. Did you see
that?
She was enigmatic. That was
the word I would use to describe
her.
You never knew what she was
thinking?
She was measured.
Theresa May said the Brexit vote
was a cry for change and tried
to put herself at the front
of the angry mob.
Now this most unknowable
and unlikely revolutionary proclaims
herself as the force
of stability.
She can't
be both.
She might be neither.

Who is Theresa May (profile and interview)

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