PM Theresa May has been slammed by one of the most respected and reliable donors to the Tory Party as a “hopeless” leader of a “weak” government who achieved little as Home Secretary and has dithered during her year as Prime Minister.
The attack by Harris, the founder of the Carpetright retail chain and a former deputy treasurer of the Conservative Party, carried particular sting because he has known May for 20 years and unlike many of her critics he is a staunch supporter of Brexit.
He said he fears that she is mishandling negotiations with the EU as the Brexiteers “didn’t think they were going to win (so) they had no plan” and “if they get the wrong deal we’ve got a problem.”
A close supporter and friend of Margaret Thatcher, John Major and David Cameron, Harris said the country needs a new leader but he does not want to see May replaced by Boris Johnson, who he dismissed as clever but lazy nor by Michael Gove, who he said lacked personality.
In fact he would prefer to see a young Tony Blair running the country rather than any member of the current Tory Cabinet. His preferred Conservative candidate for PM was the party’s leader in Scotland Ruth Davidson, who is not even an MP.
The savage blow to May’s credibility came in a lengthy interview by Harris with The Times, and appeared the day after the Prime Minister raised question marks about her view of leadership in an unlikely forum, an interview on the BBC’s Test Match Special during the Lords Test against the West Indies.
A long-time cricket fan, May surprised close followers of the game by singling out the opening batsman and famously unsuccessful captain Geoffrey Boycott as her favourite cricketer.
Boycott is widely derided as a selfish and unimaginative leader, and has admitted that his divisive tenures as captain of Yorkshire and England were undermined by his own poor “man-management” skills.
Asked by presenter Jonathan Agnew: “Didn’t he bore you to tears?” May replied: “The whole point was he stuck at it. He had a plan and he got on with it, and more often than not delivered.”
May told the cricket broadcast that she was unhappy about the criticism of her own general election campaign performance, when she was accused of parroting her promise of “strong and stable leadership” and avoiding uncontrolled exposure to the public.
“I get frustrated (that) people used the term ‘robotic’ about me during that campaign. I don’t think I’m in the least robotic, what I really enjoy is getting out there, talking to people, hearing from them, understanding what the issues are for them,” she said.
Philip Harris told The Times that he was surprised to see May reach Downing Street because he “didn’t think she had it in her”.
He had worked with her since the 1990s but was not impressed by her long tenure as Home Secretary, he said. “Every year they said they were going to reduce immigration and they never did.”
“I tell you one thing, Theresa May is no Thatcher,” he said. “Thatcher used to make decisions. Not everyone liked her but you knew where you stood.”
“I thought for the first three or four weeks (that May was PM) she did well,” he said. “Then she did the election and she was hopeless. She’s changed her mind too many times.
“I think she was shell-shocked but she’s got to start making decisions, or someone has … Theresa May has got a great opportunity if she lets [her ministers] work and leads them.
“I don’t know if she can lead them or not.”
Harris said he has stopped his large donations to the central coffers of the Conservative Party and is instead giving money to individual Tory candidates.
“Both sides don’t know what they want at the moment or where they want to go.
“I’d much rather have a strong Labour government than a weak Conservative one and I’m a Conservative through and through.
“I wouldn’t want Jeremy Corbyn but if you had Tony Blair when he first got in now he would be very good for this country.”
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