'This is not going to be easy': Why Theresa May has a tough road ahead as British PM
New Conservative leader faces delicate balancing act on several fronts as country moves toward leaving EU
When Theresa May stood outside the big, black front door at 10 Downing Street just after she became British prime minister, she talked optimistically about the future of the country as it charts an uncertain course toward Brexit.
But it stands to be quite a political tightrope to walk for the newly minted 59-year-old prime minister of a country that surprised many inside and outside its borders with its vote last month to leave the European Union.
"She's got a delicate balancing act," says Mujtaba Rahman, head of European analysis for Eurasia Group, a global political risk research and consulting firm.
There is the challenge of overseeing management of the domestic economy at the same time as the European question. And there's the quest to find an internal balance of power between those who favoured and opposed Brexit within her cabinet, along with finding a balance of power within a deeply divided Conservative Party and within the broader Parliament at Westminster.
On top of all that, there's the United Kingdom itself, which includes Scotland, where voters were 62 per cent in favour of staying in the EU.
"So there's a political balance there, an institutional balance and then of course with European leaders as well," says Rahman.
"This is not going to be easy."
Still, May has shown signs of steeliness and resolve, surprising some in particular with her appointment of Boris Johnson as foreign secretary.
'Bold move'
Putting the tousle-haired chief Brexiteer into the Foreign Office is a "really bold move," says Alan Convery, a lecturer in politics at the University of Edinburgh who was "very surprised at the comprehensive nature" of May's cabinet moves.
"I didn't think she would be that ruthless."
Gone are prominent faces from former prime minister David Cameron's cabinet such as George Osborne, the now former chancellor of the exchequer — or finance minister — and Michael Gove, a high-profile Brexiteer who was sacked as justice secretary.
Whatever challenges May faces at Westminster, some see greater tests outside London.
"The far bigger challenge is reconciling the Conservative Party parliamentary party to its membership base," says David Jarvis, a fellow at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.
Relative to the party, that grassroots membership is disproportionately "anti-Europe, very socially conservative, quite out of line with most national opinion poll data on social attitudes," Jarvis says.
"She's got to walk between those two constituencies. And that is going to be a real challenge."
No fox hunting debate?
Jarvis sees May as a "very shrewd" person, and suggests navigating this territory could involve finding issues that make the membership feel as if it is being listened to while ensuring the wider public is not alienated.
So issues like fox hunting or gay marriage are unlikely to come up. Immigration, an issue at the heart of much of the Brexit debate, might.
"She'll have to try and strike this balance, which most Tory leaders have to do, of appealing to a hardcore, quite socially conservative base whilst not alienating a centrist wider public and I think immigration is the way to go on that," Jarvis says.
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Brexit itself also poses a multitude of challenges for May, who now finds herself at the helm of a government leaving the EU while she herself was in the Remain camp, albeit with a relatively low public profile.
"Obviously she's got to continue to reassure those who wanted us to leave the European Union that despite the fact she was on the other side during the referendum she absolutely means it when she says that she's determined to follow the wishes of the electorate and take us out of the European Union," says Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London.
Beyond that, however, there is the thorny question of just what Brexit actually means. What precise kinds of trade and border arrangements will the U.K. want to negotiate with the EU? And what kinds of arrangements will it actually be able to get?
"The real crunch point will come when [May] has to decide whether she is prepared to let this country risk economic misfortune by not having access to the single [European] market in return for having more control over its borders," says Bale.
"She has to decide between that or on the other hand probably a kind of rich and more prosperous country with full access to the single market which had to compromise on its aspiration to control and reduce immigration significantly.
"I still don't see how somebody's not going to be disappointed."
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Tied up in that is the question of Scotland, which rejected independence in a referendum two years ago and signalled a desire to stay in the EU with its Brexit vote.
"Once you decide what you want [in Brexit], you need to sell that both to the Conservative Party, the Conservative Party members, the Conservative Party backbenchers, but you also need to sell that to Scotland and the rest of the U.K. as a starting position that's going to be good for the whole of the country as well," says the University of Edinburgh's Convery.
How far will she go?
How far, he asks, will May want to compromise on Brexit in order to accommodate Scotland?
"Ultimately she's going to have to decide on the form of Brexit and it's going to not please somebody."
Still, much has been made of May as a "safe pair of hands" to lead the U.K. at the moment, although some have suggested otherwise. Labour MP Yvette Cooper wrote in the Guardian last week that "there are huge risks for Britain ahead that her politics won't solve. Indeed, division will grow."
Jarvis, at Pembroke College, Cambridge, says it's all relative.
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