Relief flooded over David Cameron as he hummed a tune after announcing his resignation date. The former British prime minister stood humiliated and discredited after his lukewarm support of the Remain campaign was not enough to convince British voters to stay in the European Union. The poisoned chalice of the prime ministership has now passed to Theresa May, who served as home secretary under Cameron for six years. Her ascension came after favourite Boris Johnson was forced to withdraw when fellow Brexit campaigner Michael Gove stabbed him in the back and entered the leadership contest himself. Gove turned out to be too unpopular to be chosen Tory leader, leaving May as the compromise candidate. She then promptly sacked Gove from the cabinet. Johnson, who has a long and storied history of making outlandishly racist remarks about foreigners, has somehow been given the post of foreign secretary while veteran right-winger David Davis will be in charge of negotiating the Brexit with the EU. May’s first remarks as prime minister were conciliatory and she pledged to work for unity and on behalf of the working classes even as her cabinet appointments have moved the government sharply to the right. This kind of double role is one May is familiar with. She had set herself up during the referendum campaign as someone who was reluctantly opposed to Brexit but wanted to drastically curb immigration. Her six years as a ruthless home secretary give some indication as to how she might rule. May wanted to bring down immigration levels to the UK and did so on the backs of the poor by introducing a minimum income that must be earned if spouses and children want to live with their British partners. She also mandated a certain income that all those who have lived in Britain for less than 10 years must earn if they are to be eligible for citizenship.
May may be no friend of the poor but she has no problem with tyrants and torturers. She had threatened to withdraw Britain from the European Convention on Human Rights because it does not allow foreign criminals to be deported to countries where they may face persecution and torture. She fought hard against this rule and got a ‘victory’ in 2013 when the courts allowed cleric Abu Qataba to be deported to Jordan. May is not all that different to her predecessor. Like Cameron, she puts up a façade of reasonableness to distinguish herself from the extreme right of an already right-wing party but eagerly follows policies that will disenfranchise the poor and comfort the rich. After one-and-a-half terms of austerity economics, demonisation of immigrants and Islamophobia, Britain will have to endure more of the same. The Labour Party is proving to be a toothless opposition as its parliamentary members are more occupied with launching an internal coup against leader Jeremy Corbyn than fighting back against the Tories. Labour seems to have decided that, rather than presenting a genuine alternative to the Tories, it would return to the Blairite days when there was no difference between the two parties.
