‘Honey, I Shrunk the Majority’: Theresa May and the Tories
| Published date | 01 September 2017 |
| Author | Tim Bale,Paul Webb |
| DOI | 10.1177/2041905817726900 |
| Date | 01 September 2017 |
20 POLITICAL INSIGHT • SEPTEMBER 2017
Oppositions don’t win elections;
governments lose them. Or so
goes the old saying. Well, this
time it was right – sort of. Even
though he didn’t even come close to getting
into Downing Street, it would be churlish
to deny Jeremy Corbyn at least some of the
credit for depriving the Conservatives of their
overall majority. But no-one who followed
the 2017 campaign can seriously doubt that,
even though she managed to cling on to the
premiership in its immediate aftermath, it was
Theresa May who really blew it.
True, we already have well-sourced
accounts (albeit conicting ones) of the
Conservative campaign which suggest that it
was plagued with problems from the outset.
The party managed to get the 2015 gang
back together again at short notice (overseas
consultants Lynton Crosby, Mark Textor, and
Jim Messina; and CCHQ stalwart Stephen
Gilbert) but not all of them were convinced
that the PM was entirely wise to have called
the election in the rst place – a decision
presumably made in order to capitalise on
Labour’s apparent weakness and to increase
the Tories’ majority and Mrs May’s room for
manoeuvre in Brexit negotiations. And none
of the gang, it seems, were happy with the
inuence and control aorded to her closest
advisors, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, who for
their part were apparently unhappy at the
way their boss was put front and centre of
what, even in an era of personalized politics,
started out as an exceptionally presidential
campaign.
The boss?
In the end, though, Mrs May was – or at least
should have been – the boss. Ultimately, if no-
one in CCHQ quite knew who was in charge
of what, and if arguments continue to rage
about responsibility for this or that manifesto
promise, then, in the absence of the nal say
being delegated to a trusted Party Chairman
‘Honey, I Shrunk the
Majority’: Theresa May
and the Tories
The Conservatives were predicted to win a sweeping victory in the General Election. Instead,
Theresa May was returned with a minority government and her power significantly diminished.
Tim Bale and Paul Webb examine what went wrong for the Tories.
© Press Association
Political Insight Sept2017.indd 20 21/07/2017 11:57
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