The Abuse of Power: Confronting Injustice in Public Life

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May defines “abuse of power” as acting to protect one’s own position. The words “mote” and “plank” spring to mind. After all, was it not an abuse of power to try to trigger article 50 to commence the two-year Brexit negotiations without a vote in parliament? David Cameron’s sudden resignation unleashed a leadership contest like no other – and saw the showier rivals for his crown fall one by one with dizzying speed. So how did the daughter of an Oxfordshire vicar rise to the top job with such ease? In this fascinating biography, Rosa Prince explores the self-styled unflashy politician whose commitment to public service was instilled in her from childhood. For step-free access from the Queen Elizabeth Hall Slip Road off Belvedere Road to the Queen Elizabeth Hall auditorium seating (excluding rows A to C) and wheelchair spaces in the Rear Stalls, plus Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer and the Purcell Room, please use the Queen Elizabeth Hall main entrance. There was a concerted and mendacious effort to traduce the fans as drunken hooligans by “police, the media and some politicians”. That’s true without being as accurate as it might be. May is not always as hard-hitting as she could be when her own party and its allies are complicit in the abuse. She should have written (my additions in italics) that the smear campaign was conducted by “police, the right wing media and some Conservative politicians”. Oddly, she has less to say about the Brextremists in her own party who were the principal saboteurs of her leadership. That there was no Conservative majority in the Commons, because she had thrown it away at the 2017 election, also had something to do with her inability to get a deal through parliament. So did the fact that she did not try to fashion a cross-party consensus about how Brexit should be done until it was far too late.

You can also use the external lift near the Artists' Entrance on Southbank Centre Square to reach Mandela Walk, Level 2. The Abuse of Power is a searing exposé of injustice and an impassioned call to exercise power for the greater good. Drawing on examples from domestic and international affairs she was personally involved in at the highest level, including Stop and Search and the Salisbury Poisonings, the former prime minister argues for a radical rethink in how we approach our politics and public life. It is convenient for her to point an accusing finger at the “inbuilt cynicism” and “overzealous” approach of Home Office officials. She tells us that she was astonished to learn that officials were demanding that members of the Windrush generation produce “four pieces of documentary evidence for each year they had been in the UK” to prove their entitlement to live here. She tells us that a ministerial colleague hid “in a cupboard” rather than meet families bereaved at Hillsborough Time and time again during my period in government, I saw public institutions abusing their power by seeking to defend themselves in the face of challenge rather than seek the truth. These were the very bodies whose job was to protect the public, but they sought to protect themselves,” she said. Speaking of which, she has weirdly inserted a self-justifying chapter about her vain attempts to get a Brexit deal through parliament, the failure that led to her being forced out of No 10 by Tory MPs. This chapter sits very jarringly in a book that is supposed to be about grave injustices. Contrary to her earlier claim that she is not interested in relitigating her prime ministership and settling scores, here she does precisely that. She presents herself as a woman piously motivated by wanting to do the right thing who was unreasonably thwarted by almost everyone else, including EU leaders, the Labour party and speaker John Bercow.More than a decade after she warned stunned Conservatives of their ‘nasty’ image, May has become the champion of Middle England and, for the time being, united her riven party. Theresa May: The Enigmatic Prime Minister maps the rise of Britain’s second female premier, a woman who had to fight against the odds to become an MP, who remained overlooked and undervalued during much of her time in Parliament, yet who went on to become a formidable Home Secretary and, now, the leader of her country as it faces its greatest challenge since the Second World War. After a very long wait, those bereaved by the Hillsborough disaster finally received a full admission by the state of who was truly to blame and an apology in parliament as a result of an inquiry originally set up under New Labour when Alan Johnson was home secretary. May seeks credit for herself – this comes over as rather needy – for deciding to let the Hillsborough independent panel continue when she took over at the Home Office. That scandal occurred long before she was anywhere near government so she finds it easy to use it to present herself as an enemy of injustice and a champion of its victims. A valiant trawl through the new prime minister’s record… Prince’s narrative energy never flags.’ Rafael Behr, The Guardian

May’s prose is plain – she is no more gifted as a wordsmith than she is sparkling as an orator – but she can be punchy. “South Yorkshire police created a web of obfuscation and lies to lay the blame on fans,” she writes of the way in which Liverpool supporters at Hillsborough were smeared in an attempt to divert blame for that disaster away from policing failures by falsely assigning culpability for their deaths to the football fans themselves. Who had responsibility for the standards and the ethos of the Home Office for half a dozen years? Who presided over a culture of institutional ignorance and arrogance towards the Windrush generation? Who was the home secretary when the department received warnings that many of them were being wrongly treated as illegal immigrants? Who had failed to foresee and avoid a scandal that the inquiry into it concluded was “foreseeable and avoidable”? The book’s synopsis mentions little about May’s time in No 10 and nothing about the battles of the Brexit years. It says May will discuss how “the powerful repeatedly chose to use their power not in the interests of the powerless but to serve themselves or to protect the organisation to which they belonged”. To reach this entrance, enter the Royal Festival Hall via the Southbank Centre Square Doors. Take the JCB Glass Lift to Level 2 and exit to the Riverside Terrace. Turn right to find the Queen Elizabeth Hall main entrance. She has enough self-awareness to realise that “some will find it hard to accept” this claim. Oh, it is way worse than that, Mrs May. It is absurd to count herself among the victims of the “abuse of power”. I am staggered that she thinks the travails of her prime ministership belong in the same category as the suffering inflicted on the casualties of the Hillsborough disaster, the Grenfell tragedy and the Windrush scandal. That suggestion is not just ridiculous, it is repulsive.She justifies the bizarre inclusion of this chapter about Brexit with the extraordinary assertion that opposition to her in parliament was another “abuse of power” because her opponents put their own interests (as she sees it) before the national interest (as she interprets it) by declining to permit her the deal that she wanted. Talk to a member of staff at the auditorium entrance if you have a disability that means you can’t queue, or you need extra time to take your seat. They can arrange priority entry for you as soon as the doors open. By any measure, the disgusting maltreatment of the Windrush generation was a vicious assault by the state on the rights of citizens that inflicted terrible harm on them. But when she’s personally at the heart of the matter, May becomes much less enthusiastic about lacerating the blunders of the powerful. There’s a rather grudging admission that her use of the phrase “hostile environment” was “in retrospect, not a good term to use”. As Prime Minister for three years and Home Secretary for six years, Theresa May confronted a series of issues in which the abuse of power led to devastating results for individuals and significantly damaged the reputation of, and trust in, public institutions and politicians. From the Hillsborough and Grenfell tragedies, to the Daniel Morgan case and parliamentary scandals, the powerful repeatedly chose to use their power not in the interests of the powerless but to serve themselves or to protect the organisation to which they belonged.

For access to the Queen Elizabeth Hall auditorium seating rows A to C and wheelchair spaces in the Front Stalls, please enter via the Artists' Entrance in the Queen Elizabeth Hall Slip Road (Level 1). The answer stares May in the mirror. She can’t authentically present herself as the righteous scourge of injustice when she flinches from properly confronting her role in one of the ugliest abuses of power to stain recent British history.