The most incompetent British Government in living memory? Why Theresa May must go

President Harry S. Truman

As a blogger, I guess I am lucky to live in "interesting times". As a parent, a business owner and a citizen of the UK, maybe less so. There are many things that we can say about the EU Brexit deal, but as someone who has run a business for the last 39 years, there is one aspect of what we've seen that has seemingly been totally ignored by all of the press, pundits and talking heads popping up on TV. That is the question of competency.

The UK is facing its greatest post war challenge, therefore the one thing we are crying out for is decent leadership and a well run government. Leadership of large organisations and there is none in the UK bigger than the government, is dependent on building a strong team, united behind your vision, which is committed to delivering your collectively agreed roles. When putting together a cabinet, especially one to negotiate something as important as Brexit, you need the team to buy into your vision and work collectively to deliver it. Before someone gets a seat in cabinet, surely they should be interviewed and have to buy into the process. The resignations of Brexit secretary Dominic Raab lays bare the myth that Theresa May is a good administrator. It is clear that he had no clue about the deal which he had nominal responsibility for. It begs the question of who was responsible for signing it off. It appears that the cabinet have not been consulted on the plan, not been appraised of progress and had no input to the discussion as it developed. That is not effective management.

It is quite clear that the first clue the Brexit secretary and the rest of the cabinet had as to what had been agreed was when they were given the document at the cabinet on Wednesday. That is clearly a totally mad way of managing a team. It is clear that Theresa May has never sat down with her team, agreed the objectives and kept them appraised of how this was going. As to what the Brexit secretary has been doing for his rather large salary, we can only speculate. He clearly did not have the trust of Theresa May or her team of unelected advisers, hence his sense of shock and surprise to find out that he was responsible for a deal he couldn't sign up to.

Even whelk stall owners would manage a situation more effectively. Leadership is about taking responsibility. It is, however, not about excluding the key players in your team. May is clearly too weak to delegate, lacks the ability to trust her team and lacks the empathy to get her key players on side. President Harry S. Truman famously had a sign saying "The Buck Stops Here" on his desk. Theresa May has shown that she is incapable of running a team. She is not someone who has any management skills at all. Time and time again, her judgement has been shown to be poor. One of the main reasons we are in this mess is because she called a completely unnecessary election last year, then failed to make a convincing case to the British public. She has chosen two Brexit secretaries in succession that she can't trust. She chose Boris Johnson as foreign secretary. All of the other resignees were her choice. She picked a team that she didn't trust. Politicians always fall out, we always have resignations in politics. The difference here is that the resignations demonstrate that the whole cabinet was kept in the dark and treated like children. This is not how you run a country. Theresa May must go.