A tale of two resignations

Another year, another Conservative Prime Ministerial resignation. How different from the last. In 2016, Chancer Cameron, appalled that the rabble had disobeyed the prefects, put on his best 'I'm very disappointed in you' face, abandoned his promise to clear up the mess he'd made in the vain pursuit of internal party dominance, and strolled back into No. 10 whistling – clearly the cares of office weighed very lightly upon his shoulders.



Today we saw a very different performance: Theresa May's speech (here, from 25.00) largely blamed her party's members and Parliament (not unreasonably) for her inability to pass Britain's EU Withdrawal legislation. She ended by rushing back into the house in tears, overcome by emotion.

It would take someone with a heart of stone not to experience even a second's empathy and sorrow for the suffering she's clearly undergone in recent months.

Luckily, I am that person. My boundless reserves of human kindness were exhausted a few minutes into her speech when she dared to invoke the name of Sir Nicholas Winton (whom I knew passingly through fencing circles) in defence of her actions.

For many years the great humanitarian Sir Nicholas Winton – who saved the lives of hundreds of children by arranging their evacuation from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia through the Kindertransport – was my constituent in Maidenhead. At another time of political controversy, a few years before his death, he took me to one side at a local event and gave me a piece of advice. He said, ‘Never forget that compromise is not a dirty word. Life depends on compromise.’ He was right.

Theresa May sent vans round the streets bearing the message 'Go Home', split up British-Caribbean families seemingly on a whim and made sure that Lord Dubs amendment designed to rescue unaccompanied refugee children from squalid abandonment in the Calais camps was abolished after a pathetic 350 kids were saved.

I dread to think who will replace her, but she shouldn't be allowed to slip away with dignity: this was a vicious, self-serving and hypocritical attempt to gild a rotten lily.