Sad end for Theresa May who promised so much but delivered nothing

Prime Minister Theresa May resigns on Friday night.

It is impossible not to feel compassion for the face of suffering Theresa May showed in her frustratingly, maddeningly delayed resignation statement.

But she is the author of her own misery, and much of the misery of her nation as well.

Now she has two more weeks as the queen of the night walkers, the army of the dead.

The quicker she is gone, the quicker a replacement gets to work, the better for the British ­nation.

Even in resignation, May got it wrong.

She said her successor would have to find a consensus in the parliament for the terms on which Britain would leave the European Union.

So even to the very last, May refuses to confront reality, or rather misconstrues reality ­entirely.

As her own version of the travails of Job should surely have taught her by now: there is no consensus.

Repeat: there is no consensus.

But there is a choice.

Britain must either exit the EU with no deal, which means trading on World Trade Organisation rules and which should be entirely manageable so long as it is properly prepared for.

Or in effect it should accept defeat and stay in the EU, if necessary via a second referendum, as many have been urging.

When a leader funks an unavoidable choice, they don’t forestall conflict, they sometimes make the inevitable conflict ever greater because neither side makes the psychological preparation for the decision going against them.

From almost day one, May ­declared: “No deal is better than a bad deal.”

Yet it is no small part of the ­eccentric perversity of her political personality that May could not recognise that the deals she proposed were bad deals, the worst deals, in every way.

Andrea Leadsom, until this week the Leader of the House, declared in her statement after her resignation from the cabinet that under May’s deal Britain would not be any longer a sovereign ­nation.

May’s failure betrays the fatal weakness of the professional politician who has mastered only process, and for whom all policy commitments are negotiable.

In politics, as in international relations, pragmatism and compromise are essential, but there must be a bottom line, especially if you are dealing with an adversary as ruthless as the EU.

Initially, May promised so much. But she has delivered ­nothing.

Now a much bigger figure, ­almost certainly a Brexiteer, must command the stage, must drive the ship, must make the toughest of choices.

Boris?