I'll always think of Theresa May as the accidental prime minister.
There is no evidence that she plotted a route to Downing Street: and even when she was a senior member of the Cabinet, and quite liked by the grassroots as a tough home secretary, she didn't appear to be gathering around her a core of loyalists and promoters.
She didn't have a specific role to play during the referendum campaign in 2016; never asked to rally the grassroots or front the big set-piece events. Always there in the background - never denying that she was on the Remain side of the debate - but never seeming to be seeking anything more than remaining in the Cabinet and maybe a promotion to foreign secretary.
She became prime minister because David Cameron scuttled from office; Boris Johnson and Michael Gove fell out; Central Office and key Remainers wanted one of their own to replace Cameron and settled on her (no cohort of enemies on the backbenches); and Andrea Leadsom made a stupid and hurtful comment about May and then stood aside.
So she came to the top post without a battle. She didn't have to make her case to the grassroots. She wasn't tested at hustings. She didn't have a few weeks to listen to concerns and learn lessons. She arrived in Downing Street with nothing, literally nothing, to indicate what policy she would pursue.
I think that's where the 'Brexit means Brexit' mantra came from. It sounded strong, yet it meant nothing. She triggered Article 50 in March 2017 without having a game plan worked out, let alone an agreed strategy across her backbenches. And when she called a general election it soon became blindingly obvious that she didn't know what she meant by 'Brexit means Brexit' either. Which probably explains why she didn't win the majority that pre-election polls had indicated.
The other thing about May is that she is without passion. Other prime ministers have been able to persuade their colleagues to back a strategy they may originally have been uncomfortable with, but that's only possible when the passion shines through. That was never the case with May. There were no great performances in the House of Commons. No great performances at party conferences. No great performances in televised interviews. She was just dull. All the talk of duty and commitment meant nothing when it was delivered in much the same way as a pre-recorded message telling you which floor the lift had reached.
Her other great mistake was in appointing a trio of Secretaries of State for Exiting the European Union with whom she didn't agree. She must have been advised that it 'sent a message to the grassroots' that she was listening to all sides of the party; but the message it sent to the EU negotiators was that she wasn't being true to herself. It was the same when she threw the backstop into the mix without telling her colleagues and without 'phoning Nigel Dodds to let him know what was coming. She handed the EU a hostage to fortune and then tried to bamboozle the House of Commons into supporting what was, to all intents and purposes a self-imposed fait accompli.
Was she the worst prime minister in my lifetime? She certainly holds the record for having made an already difficult job (and no one would deny that a Remainer selling Brexit when the parliamentary arithmetic was always stacked against her was always going to be difficult) much worse than it had to be. Her absence of passion, clarity, consistency and strategy damned her from the second she crossed the Number 10 threshold. Yet she still managed to survive for 1,106 days.
Will history be kind to her? One of Obama's advisers noted that history is always kinder when you're followed by someone like Trump. So she must hope that Johnson is so monumentally bad that she looks brilliant by comparison. But her stupidity and dithering paved the route to Downing Street for Johnson. Even if he is dreadful part of the blame will fall on her shoulders.
Yes, she inherited a chalice brimming with poison. She knew that when she took the job. That she chose to drink the contents is entirely her own fault.
