Anyone other than Theresa May, and we'll be in the shit.
I'm after the most socially liberal one of the lot...
Who is most liberal – May or Johnson? ImmigrationAlexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson
Self-confessed “pro-immigration” politician who has not been afraid to celebrate new arrivals’ contributions to the UK. On Monday he denied that the leave victory was driven by anxieties about immigration. He has repeatedly called for an amnesty for those who have been in Britain for more than 12 years.
Johnson wants an Australian-style points-based system but has yet to spell out how that would work. Immediately after Theresa May’s hardline Tory party conference speech last October, Johnson criticised politicians who made immigrants “scapegoats” blaming them for “everything that has gone wrong in society”. But in his campaign he stressed that “uncontrolled EU” immigration was driving down wages and putting pressure on schools and hospitals.
Theresa May
The home secretary said that the benefits of mass migration were “close to zero”. She said immigration could not be reduced and that current levels had an unsustainable impact on housing, schools and hospitals. She recast David Cameron’s target of reducing net migration to below 100,000 to the status of an “ambition” in the face of the near-record latest figure of 333,000. Initially, the government was on track to hit the target by reducing net migration from 250,000 to 180,000, but Britain’s relative prosperity as the “jobs factory of Europe” put paid to that.
PolicingJohnson
Johnson made little attempt to reform the Metropolitan police. At the end of his period in office, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary rated the Met as “requiring improvement (substandard)” while West Midlands and Greater Manchester were rated as good.
His time as London mayor was also marked by his purchase of three German 25-year-old Wasserwerfer 2000 water cannon – which have lain unused for two years after May refused to authorise them; she said they had no fewer than 67 faults that needed rectifying before use and that they had potential to cause serious injury.
May
She oversaw the most fundamental reforms of policing for 50 years. The official crime rate has continued to fall on her watch as the longest-serving home secretary for 100 years. She has not been afraid to confront the police over stop and search, or such historic injustices as Hillsborough; she introduced elected police and crime commissioners, curbed the power of the Police Federation and pushed through 20% cuts to Whitehall police grants.
Security and civil libertiesJohnson
In the immediate aftermath of the 2015 Paris attacks when May wanted to resurrect the “snooper’s charter” he said: “I’m not particularly interested in this civil liberties stuff when it comes to these people’s emails and mobile phone conversations. If they are a threat to our society then I want them properly listened to.”
May
Responding to the disclosure by Edward Snowden of GCHQ’s mass digital surveillance programmes, she said the whistleblower had damaged national security. She introduced the investigatory powers bill to extend snooping powers to web browsing records and strengthened oversight of security agencies. She scrapped Labour’s plans for ID cards but presided over massive expansion of the database state.
May has set as a high priority the issues of violence against women, including failures to investigate rape, and modern slavery. She set up the Goddard inquiry into institutional child sex abuse and the successful inquiry into undercover policing. The scandal around the Stephen Lawrence inquiry was also tackled. She has shown she is prepared to stand up to even the most entrenched vested interest.
Human rightsJohnson
A staunch defender of the European convention on human rights, he has said: “Let’s keep it. It’s a fine thing. We wrote it.” But he railed against the European court of justice in Luxembourg. He has described extricating Britain from the ECJ’s “vast and growing corpus of law” as being a big benefit of Brexit allowing the UK to pass its own laws and set its own taxes.
May
The strongest supporter in the cabinet for withdrawing from the European convention on human rights, and the jurisdiction of its Strasbourg base. She has blamed the Strasbourg judges for frustrating her attempts to increase deportations from Britain.
Part of her opposition stems from her humiliating decade-long battle to deport the radical preacher Abu Qatada; when she finally succeeded in sending him back to Jordan she practically put him on the plane herself. But in the process she did secure guarantees that torture-tainted evidence would not be used against him.
Negotiating in EuropeJohnson
He is notorious for spending his time, as the Daily Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent, winding up the Tory party with a diet of anti-EU stories. His successor in the job, Martin Fletcher, has said: “For 25 years our press has fed the British public a diet of distorted, mendacious and relentlessly hostile stories about the EU – and the journalist who set the tone was Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. He is now campaigning against the cartoon caricature of the EU that he himself created.”
May
After 10 years she is now the most experienced interior minister in Europe and has proved highly influential in justice and home affairs policies. She has recently secured agreement for a new Europe-wide database logging passenger information for all flights in and out of Europe. Although a professed Eurosceptic it was little surprise when she announced she was backing the remain in Europe campaign. In an earlier life she was a Brussels lobbyist for the Association of Clearing Banks for six years and is very much at home trying to secure what she wants in Europe.
