The folly of Theresa May’s electoral self-denial

The British government, it turns out, will govern. By scotching talk of a general election any time soon, Theresa May has restored the normal business of state after its prolonged hiatus for the Scottish referendum, last year's election and the popular vote on Europe. The prime minister is also giving the British people a break from democracy before the onset of decision fatigue and probably saving the opposition Labour Party's life into the bargain.

As an act of monkish self-denial, it is underrated. If an election this year or early next threw up the kind of parliamentary majority implied by current polling, May could expect to rule for 10 years. Given that she was a mere home secretary hiding in plain sight as recently as June, no politician will have won so much power so quickly and to so little resistance from rival colleagues or the formal opposition.

The absence of an election gives respite to a country that has been locked in a queasy campaign setting for three years and which, at least in England, feels one landslide away from becoming a single-party state.

It is harder to see what is in it for May. There are no prizes for magnanimity. In return for passing up a long-term title to Downing Street, she gets the transient illusion of a quiet life. She will not have to find a way around the Fixed-term Parliaments Act or define a programme for government or spell out the meaning of Brexit beyond the tautology she currently favours. But the second and third of these burdens are unavoidable over time, election or no election.

The self-help industry teaches us to preserve hope when life seems bleak but the opposite feat – vigilant realism in good times – is harder to pull off. May has to see that her current pomp is built on smoke. She will not always be a novelty with the benefit of the doubt, enemies of the EU will not always be patient, defeated pro-Europeans will not always be gracious, Labour will not always be harmless, her backbenchers will not always be docile, the economy will not always be perky. Trouble will find her, and she should meet it with a protective mandate of her own.

Her majority in the House of Commons is the same 16-seat sliver that, under David Cameron, her predecessor, dissolved every time MPs took against a reform to tax credits, pensions or schools. And he had the moral authority that came from having earned that flaky margin himself.

The smell test

May is diving into the saga of European extrication, which will leave half the country feeling raw and many others disillusioned, without so much as a meaningfully contested Tory leadership election by way of personal endorsement.

There is no problem of principle here: constitutionally, May is as much the prime minister as Cameron ever was. The problem is that ineffable thing we call the smell test. If people sense something rum about a government doing big things without a direct democratic licence, they will push back, whatever Walter Bagehot would say of their grievance.

The House of Lords – presumptuously, but there it is – will feel freer to stymie this prime minister than her elected forebears, for instance. The media, already flummoxed by a woman who rose without their help, will ask who this imposter thinks she is as soon as she does anything to disappoint them. Why give them the excuse?

Not all political lives end in failure but all premierships start in success. Anything a new prime minister says, however bland and weightless, is received like scripture. A fairer Britain, more industry, something about cabinet government: this spiel still works, even though we heard it from Cameron in 2010 and Gordon Brown, then Labour prime minister, in 2007. We are as credulous now as we will be vicious later.

Unlike her predecessors, May can cash in on this temporary suspension of normal politics without any material risk to herself. Brown never recovered from his vacillation of nine years ago, when he ducked an election he had openly mulled all summer. But it was a much harder decision. He already had a majority four times as large as May’s and, though banks would fall a year later, no controversial plans for government.

May has no such reason to demur. A quick election could keep her in power until she is bored. Of course, we have had enough politics in recent years but, seriously, look at the work that awaits her. The point about a mandate is not that she should want one. She will need one.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016