How useless can our MPs be?

Our jaws dropped when we learned that some Labour MPs had nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership, just so that his voice would be heard in the debate (which they were sure he would lose). What have they done to the country, these supposedly professional politicians?

In the event they may have saved us from a Labour government. For who else could have lost against Mrs May?

Tory MPs are even more culpable. All of us in the country knew Mrs May had been a hopeless Home Secretary. Mostly she did nothing except cut police numbers and the border force. When forced to actually do something, like seeing up an enquiry into historical child abuse, she got it astonishingly wrong. Repeatedly.

She ducked governing because she was timid, because she lacked imagination,  and because she lacked intelligence. She ducked communicating with people because she was shy and cold. She sat silently in cabinet meetings because she was out of her depth and had nothing to contribute.

Yet Tory MPs – after seeing this charmless, over-promoted woman up close for years – chose her as their next leader. And she has proved every bit as hopeless as her record as Home Secretary suggested.

May does not deserve our pity for her present situation. She put herself forward as leader when she surely must have known she did not have the brains to be PM, nor the judgement, nor the charisma. This timid, vain woman continues to cost the country dearly with her puffed up, delusional ambitions.

The population of England shot up during her time as Home Secretary. Nor was there any serious attempt to address the separation of Islamic culture from the UK mainstream. May timidly feared that anything she did might make matters worse. She continued to try to communicate through traditional “community leaders”.  Liberated Muslim women complain that they cannot get a hearing from government. May stuck her head in the sand and refused any meaningful initiatives. As for boldness and fresh thinking. Pah.

After the latest terrorist attacks she announced that “enough is enough”. It was a stupid formulation (we can tolerate a few terror attacks but not so many?), but as ever with May there was no follow-up to the slogan, there seemed to be no thoughts in her head at all.

Outside SW1 we all had our individual moment when we realised how poor May was. For me it was her wooden answers in her interview with Andrew Neil. But there were plenty of other occasions.  By the time she visited Plymouth, she had become a figure of fun.

And how can an experienced senior politician not realise that a manifesto isn’t a tick list for governing, it’s a sales document? It’s not: Here’s a list of what we’ll do. It’s: Here’s why you should vote for us. But what reason did she give us? None.

Thanks to this woman the government has no Commons majority, the establishment is stirring to sabotage Brexit, and even Corbyn looks more prime ministerial than May to many people.

For her achievements over many years, Theresa May deserves our deep contempt.