It is four years and counting since Theresa May made her teary exit from No 10. That is sufficient time to dab her eyes, reflect on her life and write a memoir, but this is not one. Perhaps the wounds of a miserable prime ministership are still weeping too painfully to address her period in power at length. In the introduction, she says this book “is not an attempt to justify certain decisions I made in office”, though we will later discover that this is not wholly true.
Her central theme is how power is abused by public institutions and those who control them. This ought to be a compelling subject, given how many grotesque and flagrant examples we have witnessed over recent years. It is impossible to quarrel with her contention that “lives have been damaged and sometimes destroyed” by bad actors and negligent ones.
