Theresa May had some difficult relationships with cabinet colleagues during her time in No 10, according to Sir Anthony Seldon, the author of May at 10. And it turns out that she wasn’t strong enough to get rid of her Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson or Chancellor Philip Hammond.
Speaking exclusively with Express.co.uk, Seldon said: “She thought she could manage Boris and she made him Foreign Secretary hoping she’d have a star player, charismatic player.
“She rapidly became disappointed by him, his gaffes and by reports coming back to No 10 that he wasn’t impressing allies as Foreign Secretary.
“So she began to have second thoughts about him.
“But she knew that she wasn’t strong enough to get rid of him, any more than she was strong enough to get rid of Philip Hammond, who she had a different kind of bad relationship with.”
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The biographer didn’t hold back when claiming: “Indeed, her relationship with Philip Hammond went wrong more quickly than a relationship has ever done in the last 100 years between a Chancellor and a Prime Minister.”
When asked if the Remainer chancellor tried to block Brexit, Sir Anthony said: “He didn’t want Brexit. He never wanted Brexit.
“And once Brexit became inevitable, he wanted to mitigate it as painless a Brexit as possible.”
Meanwhile, the historian also reckons that Brexit would have been “powered through” by now if Boris had become Prime Minister after the 2016 referendum instead of May.
Sir Anthony continued: “She played her cards very close to her chest.
“She didn’t even consult her Chancellor, let alone other key members of her cabinet, her parliamentary party or parliament.
“She didn’t consult the foreign office, the treasury, the Northern Ireland office, historians, former diplomats.
“She thought she could do it by herself even though she knew very little about how the EU works.”
He added: “She turned her back on all of it and that’s a terrible indictment.
“Had Boris won, he would have powered it through, or even Gove.
“Getting out would have been a long way down the line, but we might have been out by now.”
May at 10 by Sir Anthony Seldon with Raymond Newell is out now.