Dear Theresa . . . (2019)

From the June 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Theresa,

At last, you have a clear timetable for your exit! You’ll soon be off through the revolving door to pastures new, where your distinguished service to the capitalist class will no doubt be generously rewarded. But apart from a few lucrative board appointments what else? Maybe a memoir? Although I would wait a while in order to exploit the public’s short memory. Some of your predecessors have secured lucrative speaking engagements, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up. After all, what would you talk about? I’m not sure Brexit will pull in the punters.

Another important matter to consider is your valedictory speech. I hope the fiction that you unfolded outside the doors of Number 10 on 24 May was just a prelude to something more realistic. Perhaps in the main event to come, you could dispense with such Alice in Wonderland utterances of: ‘having striven for a country that works not just for the privileged few but for everyone’ and introduce a little honesty. [Check Wikipedia if you are not sure of the meaning of this word].

Anyway, I thought I would provide you with a little help in this difficult endeavour by highlighting a few of your main achievements. You could add your own points to mine and turn it into a quiz, ranking them in order of how strongly they correlated with the upward movement of hubby’s investment fund.

You have been an incredible champion of austerity; a sleight of hand characterised by multi-billion pound cuts in wages and social provision for the poor and even bigger giveaways to the rich; at the last count resulting in 120,000 deaths which have been termed ‘economic murder’. You have privatised large swathes of public services to enrich your corporate cronies at the expense of working-class people who are left with a rump of degraded social provision. In partnership with the US regime, you have continued the imperialist rampage of war, torture and assorted violence against largely defenceless countries; the onslaught on Yemen being a perfect example which, amongst other dire consequences, has caused the death of 85,000 children through starvation.

You have played a key role in hastening the planet’s spiral into a death spin by systematically dismantling the modest protections put in place by the Climate Change Act 2008, whilst disingenuously crowing about the UK as the world leader on climate protection. You have rendered the notion of personal privacy meaningless by massively expanding surveillance. You have trampled over justice; epitomised recently by the ignominious exit of Julian Assange from the Ecuadorean Embassy and his incarceration in Belmarsh maximum security prison. You have built mega-prisons for UK citizens and concentration camps for refugees, or else deported them back to the countries from which they have fled persecution. On the party political front, you have had staggering success in rehabilitating the reputation of David Cameron. It is no longer tenable for anyone to claim that he has been the worst Prime Minister in 200 years. And you will soon hand the baton to your bosom buddy Boris to lead a strong and stable Tory government.

Enjoy your quiz!

Yours sincerely,

P.S. I’ve enclosed a couple of packs of tissues as I thought you might be running low.

P.P.S. I think this is an opportune moment for us to make a clean break and cease this turgid correspondence. Less depressing for both of us!

Tim Hart