Theresa May hated being Prime Minister. Why did she cling on for so long?

Anthony Seldon, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, has provided a series of magisterial accounts of their time in office by our recent Prime Ministers. His latest offering, May At 10 (Biteback, £25), is timely. That is because we have just started a general election campaign, with the polls showing the Conservatives having a commanding lead over the Labour Party. Some think this means that Labour can expect a thrashing. But others cast their minds back to the last general election, in 2017, where an even bigger Tory lead was eroded under the leadership of Theresa May and we ended up with a hung Parliament.

I suspect Tory strategists will have turned straight to the chapter in Seldon’s book about the 2017 election campaign to remind themselves of what not to do. From a Conservative perspective, it is excruciating to recount what a hopeless mess was made of it. Yet this is, perversely, heartening. It brings home the extent to which many of the errors were both serious and avoidable. That puts in question the thesis that Labour will inevitably close the gap during the campaign, as traditional Labour supporters, dismayed by Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, overcome their reservations and return to the fold, as if this were some natural occurrence like the weather.

For a start, the 2017 election was considered unnecessary. Indeed, May herself had ruled one out. Seldon actually thinks that there was a genuine difficulty with the narrow Conservative overall majority, but that May had been slow to appreciate it: “Her fear of losing the office she craved so deeply, so soon into her premiership, froze her with fear and prevented her from thinking clearly.” But many people just thought she was being opportunistic. The polls suggested that it was an easy opportunity to win a landslide victory.

Then, having insisted on us having an election, the Prime Minister didn’t show great gusto for it. There was a sense of disdain for talking to the media — most damagingly, her refusal to engage in TV debates with Opposition party leaders. Her disdain masked a lack of confidence. One aide claims that, before taking part in a special edition of BBC’s Question Time, May was “terrified beyond belief”.

There was also May’s lack of relish for campaigning. Fiona Hill, her confidante and communications director, told Seldon: “The PM was barely present in CCHQ. She travelled round the country looking surly and miserable.”

Sir Lynton Crosby, the Australian campaigning guru supposedly running the show, sometimes couldn’t get May to take his phone calls. He agrees with Hill: “She wasn’t good. She would say she liked general election campaigning but she didn’t. What she liked is knocking on doors. She didn’t like handling the media and came across as a reluctant Leaver.”

Negative messages about Corbyn were obvious and could have been powerful, but if nobody was scared of him actually winning it was considered safe to vote Labour. What positive theme did the Conservatives have? Seldon tried to be charitable: “The much-vaunted doorstep message by May on her first day, ‘a country that worked for everybody’, had made surprisingly little impression on the public.” Not really so surprising that such banality did not resonate.

Then we had the Tory manifesto, which not only lacked “retail offers” but actively alienated supporters — not least with its social care proposals, quickly dubbed the “dementia tax”. Most damning about Seldon’s account, though, was not just that things went wrong — they always do — but that the response was cowardly and messy. The policy was abandoned, but rather than show contrition the PM then added: “Nothing has changed!”

What of the significance of the rest of the book? It is a gripping account, with an abundance of candid observations from all the key participants — with the exception of May herself. There is no shortage of drama to recount. Naturally, the turmoil over Brexit dominates. Seldon endeavours to be fair and accurate, but sometimes his Remain allegiance emerges. His civil service sources are deferred to, giving an establishment perspective. Brexiteers, by contrast, not merely had views that he disagreed with, but “failed to understand” this or that. Still, the exasperation at the indecision was shared by Leavers and Remainers alike.

After the 2017 election, May would become dependent on Gavin Barwell, who had been recruited as her Chief of Staff after losing her seat, and Oliver Robbins, the Chief Negotiator with the EU. Both were staunch Remainers, determined that any Brexit that materialised should be diluted as much as possible. Before the election Nick Timothy, a Brexiteer, had been a counter to defeatism from civil servants.

One irony of operating in small secretive enclaves is that May’s government must have been more beset by leaks than any previous administration. This was due to resentment felt by the excluded.

May’s relations with her Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, were absurdly bad. This anecdote gives a flavour. Leaving a Davos summit May noticed “her usual RAF BAe 146 plane was not on the tarmac to take her home but a workaday model”. The Chancellor had taken her plane. “Her whole body contorted in anger and indignation,” says a witness.

In the end, of course, Brexit was not resolved and neither was much else. We drifted along with nothing to show for it. There were three years of nothingness. That material does not make for a natural bestseller. Seldon does his best to highlight his subject’s meagre achievements. He claims May “did more for women than the only other female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher”. I suppose he means such gimmicks as “gender pay reporting” and equality audits. The reality is that Thatcher’s achievements —  taming the unions, freeing the economy, spreading home ownership, winning the Cold War and so on — were far more important for women. They just happened to be important for men as well.

The paradox of this Prime Minister was that she clung on to a job for which she was so unsuited and that she hated with such tenacity. This is an enthralling account, but it deals with an uninspiring episode in our nation’s history. I am relieved that it is over — both for Theresa May and for the rest of us.