Theresa May has finally announced she will step down as PM – but her legacy will continue to haunt us all

She will be remembered for Brexit, but also for leaving myriad social injustices burning as intensely as ever

When I look at Theresa May I feel a terrible sense of a wasted premiership.

Brexit was, of course, always going to dominate it, and she knew it – and in the end it has proved her downfall, although still now we don’t know the precise timings, despite her statement to the 1922 Committee today.

Even so, she seemed sincere when she stood outside 10 Downing Street on Wednesday 13 July 2016 and spoke about other priorities – the “burning injustices” she wanted to put right. Not three years ago, yet she looks a decade younger, before the strains of managing her party and country through a virtually perpetual crisis took their toll.

It is apt now to recall her words, which sounded fresh and inspiring, as if she wanted to embark on a mission to heal a nation divided about far more than just membership of the European Union. It was certainly unexpected to hear a Conservative prime minister speak in such terms:

“... That means fighting against the burning injustice that, if you’re born poor, you will die on average nine years earlier than others.

“If you’re black, you’re treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you’re white.

“If you’re a white, working-class boy, you’re less likely than anybody else in Britain to go to university.

“If you’re at a state school, you’re less likely to reach the top professions than if you’re educated privately.

“If you’re a woman, you will earn less than a man. If you suffer from mental health problems, there’s not enough help to hand.

“If you’re young, you’ll find it harder than ever before to own your own home.

“If you’re one of those families, if you’re just managing, I want to address you directly.

“I know you’re working around the clock, I know you’re doing your best, and I know that sometimes life can be a struggle. The government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours.”

Well, rather than continuing the revolution in social justice and equality that started under Tony Blair and was extended under David Cameron (against much opposition in his own ranks), all May has to show for her efforts are the twin shames of the Grenfell fire and the Windrush affair, the latter dating back to her time as home secretary and the imposition of the infamous “hostile environment” regime on migrants. Indeed, she showed a remarkably steely resolve to prevent child refugees from Syria, for example, from finding sanctuary in this country.

The “just-about-managing” families of 2016 are scarcely managing much better today, their wages rarely keeping up with the rises in the cost of living. It is true that there are more jobs around than there were three years ago, but that genuine achievement has to be balanced against the conditions that so many workers have to put up with to make ends meet.

There is also no great sense that the housing crisis has been taken seriously enough, nor that the disadvantages of race and class have been much addressed. The gender pay gap persists. State school teachers attest to the critical state of education – blighting the life chances of so many young people. For those unlucky enough to find themselves at the sharp end of the universal credit welfare reforms, life has never been worse.

Only in the important task of improving mental health care can May claim to have had left much of an abiding legacy, and her critics dispute the adequacy of the extra funding she has secured for mental health services and the NHS more broadly.

The “burning injustices” thus remain, and, like the just-about-managing families, references to these famous phrases have disappeared from the prime minister’s statements and those of her ministers – out of sheer embarrassment.

I’m sure she regrets that her time in office has been such a disappointment on so many levels. Yet, even with Brexit dissipating so much of her energy, it was not inevitable that so little should have been done on the domestic agenda. May has the entire machinery of government at her disposal, and the officials were not all busy organising pretend traffic jams on the M20, commissioning blue passports or stockpiling medicines.

May did, even making due allowances, neglect vital public services, and that served her badly in the 2017 election. She will be remembered for Brexit, but also for leaving those injustices burning as intensely as ever.

Still, it is also true that her harshest critics and most dangerous enemies were within her own party, and often in her own cabinet, and they made her job harder than it needed to be across the field.

When she was party chair under William Hague, back in 2002 she famously used the phrase “nasty party” about the Conservatives. It is often misquoted – her point was that they knew they weren’t “nasty”, but the public perceived them that way. However, that was before so many of them started being so very nasty to her during her premiership.

I wonder what words she would use about her colleagues today.