huffingtonpost - 6 hours ago

Theresa May, former Tory prime minister, now sits as a Conservative peerBaroness Theresa May has urged Brits to avoid falling into the “trap” of populism in an emotional speech.The former Tory prime minister also focused her plea on the Conservatives, urging them to resort to such tactics for “short-term political ends” on Monday evening, but to show “leadership” instead.Delivering a Lord Speaker’s lecture, she said: “In the world of power where the club of strong men want to carve the world up in their own interests, populism and polarisation are enablers.“And those politicians in the Western world who use populism and polarisation for their own short-term political ends risk handing a victory to our enemies.“We must not risk walking into that trap.”May, who was in No.10 between 2016 and 2019, also criticised the Tories’ approach to net zero, the judiciary and human rights.She committed the UK to reaching net zero by 2050 when she was in office, but her succcessor Kemi Badenoch has now decided the party should try and repeal the Climate Change Act if they return to power.May described this as a “extreme and unnecessary measure”, warning it would “fatally undermine” the UK’s leadership on climate issues and reduce investment.She said: “This announcement only reinforces climate policy as a dividing line in our politics, rather than being the unifying issue it once was.“And, for the Conservative Party, it risks chasing votes from Reform at the expense of the wider electorate.”Her words come ahead of COP30, when world leaders will gather in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro to discuss the climate crisis – even as the head of the UN warns that the world has already surpassed its climate target of keeping temperature changes below 1.5C.The Tories’ shift on the environment follows fellow right-wing party Reform UK’s decision to scrap net zero policies.May went on to take aim at the “villainisation of the judiciary”, warning that judges had “too often come under attack from those peddling populist narratives”.While she did not mention shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick by name, he caused a stir at the Tory party conference by promising to crack down on “activist judges” who have links to pro-migrant charities.May said politicians should not “question the integrity of our justices” or accuse them of “political bias”.“I say to those seeking to villainise a judiciary that cannot easily answer back, who willfully discredit our legal system for their own expediency – it’s time to show responsible leadership.”The Tory peer then criticised the new decision for the Tories to campaign to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, urging her party to “tread carefully”.She said: “Our support for human rights has its origin in Magna Carta. How we deal with issues of human rights is fundamental to our ability to deal with autocracies and dictatorships.“Every step we take to reduce our support for human rights merely emboldens our rivals and weakens our position in the world.”May is not the first former Tory PM to take umbrage with the direction the party is now heading in.Former prime minister Liz Truss has also clashed with Badenoch, although for very different reasons.Truss has called on the Tories to embody the policies touted by the Trump administration in the States instead.Related...King s Speech 2024: Can Keir Starmer Really Defeat The Snake Oil Charm Of Populism ?Populism Is Already Having Consequences For LGBT People And Our RightsWhat The Age Of Populism Means For Our Liberal Democracy

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