Prime Minister Theresa May has taken irony to a new and unfettered level today after blaming the Tories’ unpreparedness for the snap election and a lack of meaningful debate during the election campaign for their utterly shambolic results.
Yes, without any hint of irony, the Tory leader lambasted the snap election as a ‘significant factor’ in the Tories’ poor results – seeming to forget that it was her own decision to call it in the first place.
After flat out rejecting any chance that she could possibly call a snap election, Theresa May completed a legendary full 180 u-turn, calling a snap election with just 6 week’s notice, and ultimately ending up losing the Conservative’s Commons majority, having to rely on the DUP’s 10 MPs to support their minority government.
However, in an exclusive interview with Politics Home, May said:
With a snap election, of course you have to do a little more from the centre, in relation to the selection of candidates. But I think it’s in relation to ensuring that the campaign at the centre is reflecting what’s happening at the grassroots.
And when asked by interviewer Michael Howard – a former Tory party leader – whether the snap election was a “significant factor” in the Tories’ terrible election results, she replied:
I think it was, because by definition in a snap election you’ve not been able to prepare people for it. So out there people have to work quite quickly to put their local campaigns together, and you do get slightly more of a central approach.
We need to look at that very carefully, and to make sure we get the connection between what people want to do locally and the central campaign.
As well as blaming herself for calling the snap election, Theresa May also lambastaed her own campaigning skills, saying that the message she was trying to outline to the voting public “didn’t come through in the election”.
Furthermore, whilst Theresa May chose to dodge numerous debates with Jeremy Corbyn during the General Election – much to the disappointment of the voting public and Corbyn himself – she also hilariously blamed the lack of people ‘coming together for debates’ as a key factor in the Tories’ shocking election results, telling Howard:
There was the day when there much more of an emphasis on people coming together for debates during election campaigns. Now it’s much more disparate, campaigning and messaging, precisely because there are so many more people on social media talking to each other about the campaign and political parties interacting with that as well.
So, alongside hoards of Tory Ministers and other assorted party colleagues queuing up in a bid to oust her as Tory leader, Theresa May now also seemingly has to contend with herself sniping about her own hilariously huge repertoire of political mistakes.
Tory conference is going to be fun, eh.
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