"Strong and stable" or "strong and stable leadership" was a phrase often used by the British Prime Minister

Theresa May Theresa Mary May, Lady May (; née Brasier; born 1 October 1956) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2016 to 2019. She previously served in David Cameron's cab ...

in the run up to the

2017 United Kingdom general election The 2017 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 8 June 2017, two years after the previous general election in 2015; it was the first since 1992 to be held on a day that did not coincide with any local elections. The governing ...

. The slogan was criticised often by opponents of May, for its perceived robotic delivery and contradictory nature, also becoming an

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Origins

Strong and Stable sign in Shoreditch, London (cropped)

According to the ''

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'', the phrase may have originated from former Prime Minister

David Cameron David William Donald Cameron (born 9 October 1966) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016. He previously served as Leader o ...

's resignation speech after the UK voted to leave the European Union: "stability . . . strong, determined and committed leadership". David Cutts, professor of political science at the

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, has described the phrase as an example of compressing information to provide helpful cues to voters and reduce the time needed to acquire information.

Use by Theresa May and others

"Strong and stable" was described as a

cliché A cliché ( or ) is an element of an artistic work, saying, or idea that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even to the point of being weird or irritating, especially when at some earlier time it was consi ...

and led to criticism that May was an ineffective political campaigner who could only talk in slogans. In an interview with the BBC's

Andrew Marr Andrew William Stevenson Marr (born 31 July 1959) is a British journalist and broadcaster. Beginning his career as a political commentator, he subsequently edited ''The Independent'' newspaper from 1996 to 1998 and was political editor of BBC N ...

, May was stopped after saying "strong and stable" in the first 30 seconds, and was asked to not use

sound bite A sound bite or soundbite is a short clip of speech or music extracted from a longer piece of audio, often used to promote or exemplify the full length piece. In the context of journalism, a sound bite is characterized by a short phrase or sentence ...

s. During a Commons debate, Labour MP Paul Flynn sarcastically asked the

Speaker Speaker may refer to: Society and politics * Speaker (politics), the presiding officer in a legislative assembly * Public speaker, one who gives a speech or lecture * A person producing speech: the producer of a given utterance, especially: ** In ...

if a microchip had been planted in Conservative MPs' heads to repeat "strong and stable" every 18 seconds. Artist

Jeremy Deller Jeremy Deller (born 30 March 1966) is an English people, English conceptual, video and installation artist. Much of Deller's work is Collaboration, collaborative; it has a strong political aspect, in the subjects dealt with and also the Idealiz ...

designed a poster parodying the phrase and mocking the government's Brexit process. At a press conference during the election campaign, a reporter suggested that May was "weak and wobbly" rather than "strong and stable". This was repeated by other news outlets. At another point in the election campaign, a man presented opposition leader

Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (; born 26 May 1949) is a British politician who served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020. On the political left of the Labour Party, Corbyn describes himself as a socialist ...

with two bananas, one bearing the word "strong" and the other with the word "stable." Corbyn found the incident amusing even though the man had intended to suggest that his politics were bananas. After the election, May reportedly wanted to drop her "strong and stable" slogan because she felt it was making her look "stupid", and it was widely considered that the phrase had been overused and was becoming ever less effective.

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, the

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's coordinator for Brexit-related affairs, parodied the phrase by saying "Any Brexit deal requires a strong and stable understanding of the complex issues involved".

Later use

The phrase was still being associated with May in 2019, the year of her resignation as prime minister. ''The Guardian'' quipped, on a book collecting a few years of John Crace's politics sketches:

Bibliography

References

{{Theresa May, state=collapsed British political phrases Internet memes introduced in 2017 Political Internet memes Political quotes Theresa May