 "Theresa May")
UK Prime Minister Theresa May is increasingly isolated as her demands to control all areas of policy alienate key colleagues, according to more than a dozen officials who worry tensions will undermine planning for Brexit.
Speaking anonymously because the subject is delicate, many of the government figures said an early period of goodwill toward May had given way to division and resentment, leading to policy mistakes that had to be hastily corrected. Much of that stems from the influence wielded by her joint chiefs-of-staff, Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy, the people said.
“This sounds like echoes of the end of the Thatcher era with ministers feeling it would be wrong to risk her wrath and stifling rational concerns,’’ said Richard Hayton, who teaches politics at the University of Leeds, England. It’s the feeling that the prime minister’s office “is too much in the bunker.” May’s office said in a statement they didn’t “recognise this version of events,” and said the premier governs in an “inclusive manner.”
May is said to have been centralising power more than her predecessor David Cameron while grappling with the most difficult task facing a British leader since the end of World War II. Not only must she extricate the country from the European Union, she needs to orchestrate a set of new trade deals at a time of economic danger, and rally the expertise and talent to pull it off.
Bloomberg
