What lies behind Theresa May’s extraordinary attack on Boris Johnson?

The former prime minister has accused her successor of ‘abandoning our position of moral leadership,’ writes John Rentoul

Theresa May has hit out at Boris Johnson’s leadership (Picture: Jack Taylor/Getty Images)

For someone who was prime minister for three years, Theresa May still seems a little naive about how journalism works. Would you like to write a comment article for us welcoming Joe Biden’s inauguration, the Daily Mail asked. Yes, I think I can knock something out, she replied. Or words to that effect. 

So May set to work. Biden – and Kamala Harris – partners for positive action, respect for human dignity. Writes itself really. Bit of a contrast with the wild man I had to deal with. “I never knew what to expect – from being offered, sometimes literally, the hand of friendship to hearing him question core tenets of the transatlantic alliance.”  

Mob storming the US Capitol: shocking. But now, a chance to restore the UK’s role in world affairs. (I coined “Global Britain” you know.) My successor has made a mess of things, so I will just remind you what he’s done wrong by repeating things I’ve already said on the floor of the House of Commons. “Threatening to break international law.” Not good. “Abandoning our position of global moral leadership as the only major economy to meet both the 2 per cent defence spending target and the 0.7 per cent international aid target.” Bad.  Press “send”.

Next thing May knows she’s the front-page lead in this morning’s Daily Mail: “May: Boris’s Moral Failure.” Suddenly her simmering resentment against Boris Johnson has boiled over into the greatest feud between prime ministers of the same party since Ted Heath’s epic sulk against Margaret Thatcher. 

So what is May up to? What does she hope to achieve by setting fire to what was left of her bridge to Boris island? I suspect that she is partly an accidental arsonist. She thought she was just saying what she had said before, not realising the incendiary time and place. 

It is in any case apparent that she disapproves of Johnson – so apparent that it is surprising that she thought there was a chance he might appoint her as chair of the UN climate summit in Glasgow this year. 

But former prime ministers tend to overestimate their indispensability. Heath thought Thatcher should have brought him back as foreign secretary. Tony Blair thought he could be president of the EU. May, as architect of the net zero carbon target, thought she rather than Alok Sharma was the ideal person to represent Britain’s global leadership on the climate emergency.  

She has misjudged these kinds of things before. When she became prime minister and dispatched the previous regime to the back benches she now occupies, she showed a lack of tact that was not in her best interest. By lecturing George Osborne on “getting to know the party better” she made a needless enemy of someone who could have been useful to her, just as she thinks she could still be useful to the Johnson government. 

There are other reasons why she might have chosen to set out her view now. 

She is a politician. Despite her personal shyness, she loves the attention. She may not realise how much of the attention she attracts is because the British public loves a loser, and the British press reflects that. The transformation of John Major from useless prime minister to the fount of all dignified wisdom on why the Conservative Party should be more left wing and more pro-EU has been wondrous to behold, and May has already travelled a long way up a similar trajectory more quickly than Major ever did. 

The cynic might think that May seeks the publicity to boost her speaking fees, which for a politician never acclaimed for her oratory are generous. But the more plausible explanation for the scorching trolling of her successor is that she sincerely disapproves of him and didn’t realise what a fuss she would cause.