When Theresa May called the election for June 8, she assumed she would garner an unassailable majority in Westminster. All polls had pointed in that direction.

Logic dictated that, barring some massive catastrophe, there was no way the Conservative Party would lose ground to Labour led by a man whose parliamentary party refused to support him and who openly expressed admiration for a whole basket of deplorables. The list included Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro and terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Irish Republican Army.

The general feeling was that Jeremy Corbyn was the best asset that the Conservatives had.

As long as he was at the helm of the Labour Party, there was no chance of losing control of Westminster.

May tried to project herself as the only reasonable and rational choice to pilot Brexit talks. Her slogan, ‘Strong and stable leadership in the national interest’, tried to drive home the point that she was a strong leader who knew the affairs of state and would calmly make a success of Brexit. Indeed, if one believed her, the whole concept of this snap election was to strengthen her hand at the negotiating table.

And yet, this supposedly “strong and stable” leader wobbled.

Halfway through the campaign, it became apparent that she embodied the catastrophe that Labour was waiting for to turn its fortunes around.

To the casual political observer, there is a whole smorgasbord of issues which could have been avoided.

Firstly, May gradually lost her credibility. The staggering number of U-turns meant she seemed to disagree with herself. In a matter of months, she changed her mind on calling an early election. This proved to be her most costly gamble. There were other major U-turns: her change of heart on Brexit, her decision to scrap a social care manifesto commitment after it was rightly labelled a ‘dementia tax’ and her commitment to human rights in the wake of terrorist attacks.

By the end of the campaign, voters would be forgiven for questioning whether she stood for anything at all.

Secondly, her message was replete with awful clichés. There are too many to list. Voters were told “Brexit means Brexit”. Alas, what May understood by ‘Brexit’ was never made clear.

She claimed she wanted a “red, white and blue Brexit” – although what that meant too remains a mystery.

One can presume May was not referring to the French tricolour. Yet, one cannot assume either that she had any idea what she was talking about.

When journalists tried to get a straight answer, they got the same standard rehearsed phrases: she was the only person able to provide “strong and stable leadership” and to “make a success of Brexit”.

The “strong and stable” brand was upstaged by her weak and feeble persona. The slogan became comically ironic.

She seemed comical and hapless: her predictable clichés delivered in a sing-song voice, her slightly stooped posture, her clenched jaw and her awful grimaces.

The ridiculous shoes just added to the comic effect.

The U-turns and the rehearsed empty words led to questions about her personality. What was she like? What did she stand for? In several TV interviews, she came across as robotic and impersonal. She seemed unable to articulate an original thought without resorting to some rehearsed cliché.

She even refused to attend the leaders’ debate.

The turn of events could not be predicted. This was the first serious electoral test for May. In 1997, she was assigned a safe Conservative seat, which she always won by a comfortable margin. Her rise through the front bench of the Conservative Party was swift and seamless.

She was chosen party leader without having to go through a rigorous leadership election. Her political acumen remained unchallenged and untested.

Her position is now untenable. She has shown that she lacks sound judgement – an essential quality which every politician should possess. This was sorely lacking when she called the election, when she approved the manifesto, when she refused to debate her opponents and when she failed to answer the concerns of the media and the public.

The result is a hung Parliament, which will necessitate considerable deals and arrangements with other political groups. There will be a new dynamic to the Brexit negotiations. On an international stage, her stature is weakened and diminished.

The campaign has exposed all her character weaknesses and her flawed logic. Her claim that “no deal is better than a bad deal” effectively gives the EU-27 the ability to impose all the terms without giving Britain a say.

Her humiliation at the polls means that she lacks the clout and the credibility to negotiate.

Machiavelli rightly predicted that, in the end, hubris brings all governments down. May’s decision to call an early election was partly motivated by this excessive self-confidence. She failed. In the pantheon of Conservative leaders, she has a place with the party failures – a worthy successor to Chamberlain, Eden and Heath.

Life on the backbenches should be the logical outcome. Britain deserves better.

André DeBattista is an independent researcher in politics and international relations.