The Huge Challenge Facing Theresa May
May had earned a reputation as a law-and-order type, whose actions, such as beefing up anti-terror laws and placing new restrictions on immigration, pleased the Conservative faithful and outraged defenders of civil liberties. In 2013, for example, May supported the detention at Heathrow Airport of David Miranda, the partner of Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who helped to break the Edward Snowden story.
.. In a government dominated by the products of tony private academies—Cameron: Eton; Osborne: St. Paul’s—May had been largely educated at public schools. She also serves as the M.P. for Maidenhead, a middle-class commuter town about thirty miles west of London, and there, evidently, she has come to recognize the gaping chasm that many of her constituents perceive to exist between themselves and the London-based élites.
.. With the Labour Party having shifted to the left under Jeremy Corbyn, and now seemingly embarking on a civil war, some Labour voters might be attracted to a less élitist form of Conservatism.
.. On the British end, they will be led by David Davis, a former chairman of the Conservative Party who campaigned on the Leave side, and whom May has appointed as “Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union.” It wasn’t immediately clear how Davis will interact with Boris Johnson, the controversial Brexiteer-in-chief, whom May, to the surprise of many, appointed as Foreign Secretary.
.. May’s other challenge will be liberating the British economy from the fiscal straitjacket that Osborne has confined it to for the past six years, in an ideologically driven effort to reduce the size of the state.