LAST week Brexit claimed its second Tory Prime Minister in three years. As Mrs May tearfully bade farewell, many of us wondered to what extent she was personally responsible for the troubling state of the country. Let alone the widespread distrust and scorn ordinary people seem to feel for politics. After all, they say countries get the politicians they deserve.

To begin at the beginning with Mrs May’s years as Home Secretary in David Cameron’s austerity government. Even then commentators noted a readiness to sow divisions between people. Take the “hostile environment” towards illegal immigrants and her boast in 2013 of wishing to "deport first and hear appeals later". Or the notorious “go home” vans driving round multicultural areas and the still unravelling Windrush scandal.

Since then we have witnessed a rising tide of intolerance against the many migrants this country depends on for its prosperity. In such a context, Mrs May’s policies as Home Secretary surely contributed to the rise of Nigel Farage and his anti-immigrant rhetoric.

It is often said a consistent theme of the May premiership has been putting the interests of our wealthy elite above that of ordinary citizens. This is perhaps understandable. Mrs May’s own husband is a senior executive with a £1.4tn investment firm, Capital Group, and a multi-millionaire to boot.

Certainly, inequality has mushroomed during her years in office, despite her claim to want to tackle “burning injustices” in society. Only last week the UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Professor Philip Alston, highlighted the effects of the government’s austerity programme. His report cites “shocking” rises in the use of food banks and rough sleeping, falling life expectancy for sections of the population, the “decimation” of legal aid, the denial of benefits to the severely disabled, falling public sector workers’ salaries in real terms and the impoverishment of single mothers and people with mental illness.

Professor Alston pointed out through careful analysis that austerity had “deliberately gutted” local authorities, reducing library, youth, police and park services to create “unheard-of levels of loneliness and isolation”.

Sadly, the government casually dismissed the report as “barely believable”. Which brings us to another key theme of Mrs May’s time as national leader: a tendency towards evasiveness and misinformation. Many concerned people watching her performance in PMQs each week will have been alarmed by the selective use of statistics to justify doing nothing about very real problems we face. Indeed, to claim everything is rosy. Housing crisis? What housing crisis. Climate emergency, failed privatisations, underfunding of vital public services, our declining manufacturing base . . . for years the government seem to have been in denial that they need to act.

Yet I suspect Mrs May’s government will be remembered above all for incompetence. The Brexit shambles will inevitably define her legacy. Since the referendum our nation’s future health and place in the world have been held hostage by warring factions within the Tory party. The fact that we are now facing the real possibility of a disastrous No Deal Brexit can be blamed squarely on Mrs May pandering to Brextremists in her party.

What else were the empty slogans like “red, white and blue Brexit” and “no deal is better than a bad deal” all about? How else is it possible to explain three years of directionless dithering without any attempt to compromise, build a consensus and deliver a soft Brexit broadly acceptable to Remainers and Leavers alike? We may yet all pay a high price for the government’s collective failure to exclude No Deal.

People are rightly sick of politics at the moment. What we crave is honesty about the big issues we face, as well as practical, adequately funded, road-mapped solutions to those problems that measurably improve the lives of all our citizens. We also crave justice and kindness, not least in our foreign policy, because effective government is never just about money but morality.

Yes, we should learn from Theresa May’s premiership. Not to blame her alone for the government’s numerous failures. Instead of obsessing about Brexit and the internal woes of the Conservative Party, now is the time to genuinely tackle burning injustices closer to home.