The most important biographical fact about Theresa May is not her Anglicanism, her middle-classness or her sex. More tellingly, she had never served as Britain’s opposition leader or chancellor of the exchequer before she became its prime minister.
Those two jobs, which most of her predecessors had done at least one of as a tour of duty for the premiership, acquaint a politician with the full spectrum of work undertaken by the state: the loftiest geopolitics, the technical morass of welfare, the producer interests in healthcare and education. Mrs May’s pedigree is a six-year immersion in the Home Office — a narrow department even before criminal justice fell out of its remit in 2007 — and some journeyman portfolios in opposition. She had never done a business-facing job.
On the life-and-death matters of crime, terror and espionage, no recent prime minister has sounded more authoritative. On other subjects, none has shown more nervousness. A lot of government is alien to her. She knows it. Increasingly, we know it too.