Boris Johnson didn’t start the fire. It was Theresa May, his predecessor as UK prime minister, who embarked on a harder Brexit than a close referendum result seemed to warrant. It was May who gave some bellicose advisers the run of Downing Street. It was May who equivocated when High Court judges were under tabloid siege. Much of the civic and economic rot in the UK can be traced back to a prime minister who now plays the elder stateswoman, forever tutting at her errant successors.
Some Conservatives have a theory about this. Having voted Remain, and scolded “nasty” Tories in the past, May was always straining to show the right that she was one of them. The result was textbook overcompensation. A fervent Leaver, with nothing to prove, might have been milder on the status of UK-resident EU citizens, for instance. And slower to invoke Article 50, the formal process of Brexit, when there was no plan.
An ocean away, US Republicans won’t remember her from among the rabble of recent UK premiers. But, as Ron DeSantis courts them, the parable of May is something to keep in mind as a warning. The idea has taken hold that Florida’s governor is a much safer alternative to Donald Trump: a populist, no doubt, but a house-trained one. This is wrong, or at least rash, on two counts.