Theresa May warns of gutter politics during final major speech

In her final speech as PM, Theresa May took aim at Boris Johnson and Donald Trump.

Theresa May has told Boris Johnson to stay out of gutter politics as she sounded the alarm against the rise of populism.

Without naming her likely successor, Mrs May urged the next prime minister to compromise in the pursuit of a “sustainable” Brexit outcome around which the nation could reunite.

Making her last speech before she stands down on Wednesday, May said she was worried that politics was losing its ability to balance competing interests.

Technology, meanwhile, allowed people to “express their anger and anxiety without filter or accountability”.

“An inability to combine principles with pragmatism and make a compromise when required seems to have driven our whole political discourse down the wrong path,” she said.

Compromise had been essential to the establishment of many post-war international institutions, she said, and had been vital to the creation of the NHS.

This consensus was under attack with figures such as President Putin emboldened to say that the “liberal idea is obsolete”, she said. Other than the Russian president, Mrs May was careful to avoid naming those she blamed for the worsening state of politics.

There was no mention of President Trump despite her forthright condemnation of his Twitter attack this week on four US congresswomen from minority backgrounds.

May had a warning for Conservative party frontrunner Boris Johnson. Picture: AP

Nevertheless it was clearly Mr Johnson she had in mind when she warned against an “absolutist” approach — “one which believes that if you simply assert your view loud enough and long enough you will get your way in the end. Or that mobilising your own faction is more important than bringing others with you,” she said.

“This is coarsening our public debate. Some are losing the ability to disagree without demeaning the views of others.”

Quoting President Eisenhower, Mrs May said that the middle of the road was “all of the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.”

Challenged over whether she should have shown a greater willingness to compromise, she said that she had been willing to sacrifice her job to get the Brexit deal through.

In a swipe at Brexiteers such as Iain Duncan Smith she said: “I’m deeply disappointed I haven’t been able to deliver Brexit but I did everything I could to do that.

“I put my own job on the line to do that. I was told that if I said I would stand down then the votes would come behind the deal. I said I would stand down and I am doing so, but the votes didn’t come. That’s politics.”

The Times