IN HER final speech to parliament before stepping down as an MP, Theresa May took time to praise her constituents and say being an MP is “the best job in the world”.
Her Maidenhead seat includes large parts of Wokingham borough including Twyford, Sonning, Wargrave and Ruscombe. In general election on July 4, these areas will become part of the new Wokingham parliamentary seat.
The former prime minister is leaving the chamber as a result, ending 27 years as MP.
“I have always put great store by the relationship between a Member of Parliament and their constituents, and I consider my Maidenhead constituents to be the best of British,” she said.
“They are hard-working, they are entrepreneurial, and they are compassionate.
“In all my 27 years, I have been struck by the enormous effort that they have put into helping others and the voluntary work they do around the constituency.”
She also took time to thank Conservative activists and officers: “We all know how those who deliver the leaflets, knock on the doors and raise the funds are an important part of our democracy and our politics.”
Mrs May paid special tribute to one particular door knocker: her husband Philip.
“(He is) my best canvasser-in-chief – he is quite a good leaflet deliverer as well – who has been alongside me and supported me for every one of those 27 years in this place, and for my time standing beforehand and as a councillor in the London borough of Merton, who was also there when I was Prime Minister, in the evenings, when he had to make the beans on toast and pour the whisky when the day had not gone quite as well as I had expected,” she said.
Also thanked are the police and security staff, as well as her office staff.
Mrs May admitted that leaving the House of Commons would be a great wrench, and she had wanted to be a Conservative MP since she was 12.
“I was always a Conservative; I have never been a member of another party. I have always been a Conservative in the room, and I will continue to be a Conservative in the room,” she said.
And she warned of the need to continue to protect democracy, saying: “There is polling evidence that an increasing proportion of young people do not think democracy is the way to run a Government.
“We, in this mother of Parliaments, should do all that we can to show the value and importance of democracy, because it is democracy that enables people to have the freedom, to be the best they can be, and to do what they want to do, rather than what the state tells them they must do.”
Reflecting on the situation in the United States, she warned: “We saw in 2021, in the 6 January attack on the Capitol—that great bastion of democracy—that our democracy is actually more fragile than we had thought over the years. So I urge everybody to champion that cause.”
