It’s one of the many paradoxes of Theresa May that, despite having held one of the major offices of state since 2010, there are still enormous gaps in our knowledge of how and what she thinks.
When she became Prime Minister last July, for example, her experience of foreign affairs was extremely limited. From Mrs Thatcher onwards, we have been used to PMs who “got” Israel. But what about Mrs May?
It was not a good start — to put it mildly. Britain’s drafting of UN Resolution 2334 which condemned Israeli settlements, with key input from the Palestinian delegation, was regarded as a 40-year low in relations with Israel.
As one senior communal leader told me: “If Labour wasn’t so toxic, the Tories might have blown 20 years of work in one vote.”
My conversations within Whitehall made clear to me the vote was no accident.
My source said Mrs May considered Israeli settlements one of the main obstacles to peace talks and the resolution was “the first step in a re-emphasising of long-standing UK policy against settlements”.
With so little to go on to guide us over Mrs May’s attitude to Israel and the Middle East, this seemed entirely plausible.
But if one looks at subsequent events and takes a step back, a very different picture emerges.
On one level, there is nothing remotely unusual about the idea that Mrs May considers Israeli settlements an obstacle to peace talks. So would all her predecessors as PM. But, of course, none of them voted for a hostile UN resolution, let alone acted as its de facto sponsor. So something was clearly up last December.
Over the past few months I have spoken to a variety of insiders, some friendly to Mrs May and some very hostile. I have tried not just to piece together what happened with Resolution 2334 — which I explained in January — but more generally, how she approaches issues.
Two friends of the Prime Minister — and there are far more people who claim that title than deserve it — emphasise the same thing. The key to understanding Mrs May is to remember where she comes from — Eastbourne — and where she represents — Maidenhead. She is suburban in the very best sense of the word: calm, tolerant and well-adjusted but also firm, disciplined and comfortable in her own skin. Typically British, one might say. That all means she has a loathing of extremes.
Take her attitude to Islamism. She is clear that Islamism is a danger that must be dealt with. But she has little time for those who, as she considers it, are obsessive about its dangers.
That same mind-set governs her approach to every issue — including foreign affairs. So while she is solidly in the Conservative mainstream over Israel, she parts company with those defenders of Israel who can see no wrong in its behaviour; specifically, that means settlements.
That said, neither she nor Number 10 were the instigators of Resolution 2334. The running was made by Matthew Rycroft, the UK’s UN Ambassador, and Foreign Office officials in London.
The real problem, however, lay in Number 10. Part of its role is to police errant departments and avoid own goals. This did not happen. As a Whitehall source told me: “Number 10 took its eye off the ball. They screwed up badly.”
But for a guide to Mrs May’s own views, and how she thinks, what happened next is more informative. Mrs May’s joint chiefs of staff, Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy, are widely and rightly regarded as being almost an extension of her. And Israel has no closer ally in Britain than Mr Timothy, who was determined to find the earliest opportunity to show that, while support for Resolution 2334 could not be undone, it was not indicative of a new policy.
That opportunity arose just five days after the UN vote when John Kerry, the outgoing US Secretary of State, attacked the Israeli government in a speech at the State Department. The response from Number 10 was immediate: “We do not believe it is appropriate to attack the composition of the democratically elected government of an ally.”
It is best to think about this not simply as an unprecedented attack on our ally, the US, but in the context of Mrs May’s derision of extremes.
The UK had moved to the extremes over Israel, conniving in a UN attack. But, within days, it had jumped on the departing US administration’s departure from diplomatic norms.
This is also how it is best to look at the decision to treat the Paris “peace” conference the following weekend with close to contempt. The UK delegation was low level — Tobias Ellwood was refused permission to go — and the UK not only refused to sign the communiqué but then issued a statement attacking the entire event.
Mrs May remains an enigma. But it is an enigma that is far from closed.
