Theresa May - the Wizard of Oz of politics

Let me be very clear about this. Theresa May is hugely over-promoted.

She is the accidental prime minister. After being a very poor Home Secretary she became leader by accident, so her inadequacies weren’t exposed at that stage. She is a control freak who can’t delegate, she can’t think on her feet, she can’t improvise, she has no charisma, and she lacks empathy & imagination.

I am very clear about this. May is a clunker. She got away with being a useless Home Secretary who got nowhere near her net migration targets, and didn’t help herself by cutting the border force.

Commentators who want to urge a course of action on her naturally shy away from discussing her shortcomings.

But I want to be clear on this. She is wholly unfit for high office.

Take her wooden, wholly unspecific answers to a few simple questions on a visit to Plymouth yesterday. Quite apart from being wholly inadequate from any politician of any seniority, they are an insult to the democratic process, as they tell the voters of Plymouth nothing about her opinions on some major local issues.

Now, it’s not as if arriving in Plymouth took her by surprise. And it wasn’t her first visit. It’s not as if she couldn’t have been briefed on local concerns. But it looks as if Theresa May couldn’t be arsed. She insulted the voters of Plymouth. And she thought that was absolutely fine.

Now we know why she was so quiet in the EU referendum. It wasn’t some calculating master plan. It was because she had nothing to say. Then she became leader by accident. Gove and Boris self-combusted, Leadsom emerged as a crybaby, and May was never tested.

While May was surrounded by her officials and her aggressive special advisers, commentators assumed there must be some substance to her.

But let us be absolutely clear. She couldn’t avoid being exposed in this campaign. And she has been exposed as inadequate.

Adequate maybe – maybe – as a junior minister. But not fit for high office.

People were in awe of the Wizard of Oz. He was a fraud. A clever fraud, but a fraud.

I want to be very clear about this. Theresa May is a fraud. In the campaign that she called, the Tories started with a landslide lead. Now the country wonders if they are going to be buried under an avalanche. Whether they win or not, May’s career should be over.

The Wizard of Oz should fly off to Maidenhead and obscurity.