Theresa May must see Brexit as a great chance, not a problem
Despite backing Remain in the referendum, the Home Secretary must show she can confidently handle Britain leaving the EU
THERESA MAY will be Britain’s next Prime Minister if she can sound confident and optimistic about Brexit.
May’s most obvious weakness in this contest is that she backed Remain, while most Tory members went for Brexit.
Andrea Leadsom’s supporters are convinced that banging this referendum drum offers her a route to victory.
“The membership is sceptical and she talks their language,” says one former minister who is supporting her.
This is why it is imperative that May makes clear that now the voters have delivered their verdict, she views leaving the EU as an opportunity to be seized, not a risk to be managed.
In the next few days, her Brexiteer supporters — including Liam Fox, Priti Patel, David Davis and her campaign chairman Chris Grayling — will all be out and about saying that it is she who can deliver exit.
But May herself needs to sound upbeat, to not let Leadsom be the candidate of hope and change.
“The membership knows Theresa. But it doesn’t know Andrea yet, she’s got room to grow,” one of Leadsom’s confidants tells me.
They want to emphasise her warmth, creating a contrast between Leadsom the mother who had a career before politics and May, who first stood for Parliament nearly a quarter of a century ago.
The most effective way for May to counter this is to make clear that she has the chops and the will to get trade deals done with the fast-growing parts of the world economy.
Her trump card against Leadsom is her experience. Leadsom has been a minister for two years. May has been on the Tory front bench for 17 years and Home Secretary for six.
Is this moment in Britain’s history, with the most complex negotiation of the post-war era ahead of us, the right time for a novice?
Perhaps, though, the biggest risk for May is her record on immigration.
She hasn’t hit the Tory target of cutting net migration to the tens of thousands once in her six years at the Home Office.
This isn’t just down to EU migration either, non-EU migration is 188,000 a year at the moment.
Leadsom — unlike Boris, Osborne and Gove — hasn’t been an advocate of liberal immigration policies, so will find it easy to attack May for this failure.
This will be a very different campaign from the one that May expected to fight.
For years, she has been setting herself up to run against a male opponent — a Boris or an Osborne.
Her message has been that she’s a serious, unshowy politician who doesn’t treat politics as a game and isn’t part of the Westminster set.
But now May is taking on another woman, it doesn’t matter that she isn’t part of the parliamentary boys’ club because her opponent isn’t either.
Which is another reason why May can’t cede optimism to Leadsom.
Mrs May knows that one of her weaknesses is that she’s regarded as a micro-manager.
So she’s been busy this week trying to reassure Tories that she’ll bring back proper Cabinet government and there won’t be a Blair, or Cameron-style, kitchen Cabinet.
One of those who worked for Cameron and is now signed up with May has already noticed one difference in how the two teams work.
He has told colleagues that “they even sit round tables for meetings”.
The era of sofa government might be coming to an end.
COLD FEET AS EAGLE SWOOPS
MONDAY is the day.
After weeks of waiting and dozens of resignations, there will finally be a Labour leadership challenge on Monday with Angela Eagle expected to throw her hat in the ring.
This is a high-risk manoeuvre.
If Corbyn wins again with the membership, his position will be strengthened.
The 172 Labour MPs who voted “no confidence” in their leader would have to either button it or split off and form their own party, leaving Corbyn and his hard left clique with both the Labour name and the party apparatus.
This is why some Labour MPs are getting cold feet about a challenge.
One virulent Corbyn critic told me this week that it would be better to delay, that a few months of watching this makeweight Shadow Cabinet struggle would shift things in their favour.
“Some would rather just indulge in trench warfare for the next few years,” admits one plotter.
Another complication is that Angela Eagle isn’t the only MP who wants to replace Corbyn.
Owen Smith, the party’s former work and pensions spokesman, is also keen.
Though insiders suspect his cause is being advanced by the deputy leader Tom Watson to, in the words of one, “clip Eagle’s wings”.
The success of any challenge will turn on the views of the more than 100,000 people who have signed up to Labour since the EU Referendum.
At first, those joining appeared to be pro-Europeans, who wouldn’t thank Corbyn for his lacklustre approach to the Referendum.
But in the last ten days, the hard left have mobilised and got tens of thousands to sign up.
I understand this means that a majority, albeit a slim one, of those who have joined since June 23 are pro-Corbyn.
If Corbyn wins a second leadership election, it will be game over for Labour as a serious political force.
It will have decided to become a party of protest, not power.
THE next seven days will make or break Andrea Leadsom.
She is going to have a lifetime of scrutiny in a week.
Everything from her tax returns to her old blog posts are going to be put under the microscope.
This could finish off her leadership bid.
But in politics, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
So if Leadsom comes through this, then she will be a serious contender.
“She is either going to fall apart or she is going to get momentum and we’ll all be terrified,” one May backer tells me.
Tory MPs who aren’t supporting her think Leadsom simply isn’t ready for what’s about to hit her – that two years as a junior minister doesn’t prepare you for the attention that someone who is one vote away from Number 10 receives.
The way in which she and her team have responded to questions about her CV, which has had far too much polish applied to it, doesn’t bode well for her chances.
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But Leadsom is surrounded by many of the team that guided Iain Duncan Smith to victory in the 2001 Tory leadership contest.
They know their way round this track.
So it would be a mistake to write her off before this race has got going.