Theresa May is safe for now – but with no obvious successor senior Tories still fear a bloodbath

THERESA MAY wants to carry on as if nothing had happened. But the Cabinet won’t let her.

They are determined to force her to listen to them more and not just rely on her two chiefs of staff.

“She needs to realise she can’t do this all on her own,” complains one Secretary of State. “She needs help.”

Up to now, the Cabinet has had remarkably little influence over the May government. But “that attitude is over” one senior Cabinet minister tells me.

“The skyrocketing polls acted as a brake on the rest of us, when we should have been objecting,” admits this minister.

But with Mrs May so damaged by the election, the Cabinet now won’t be shy about letting her know what they think. “She’ll get much more engagement,” I’m told.

An idea that is gaining traction among Cabinet ministers is making Mrs May appoint a Deputy Prime Minister. This DPM would be given real power, making Mrs May consult daily with someone outside her circle.

The Cabinet are brutally clear about how the election flop, doing worse against Jeremy Corbyn than David Cameron did against Ed Miliband and losing the Tories’ majority, is Mrs May’s fault.

“Her limitations have been fully exposed,” one tells me.

But Mrs May’s position is safe for now. Why?

Because the Tories don’t want another election. They fear the momentum is with Labour and that the party would do even worse in a second vote.

“The next time the electorate gets hold of us, they’ll do us some serious damage,” warns one former Cabinet minister.

Tories are genuinely rattled that Jeremy Corbyn could actually become Prime Minister. “Everything is subordinate to the need to stop Corbyn, including Brexit,” one influential Eurosceptic tells me.

This desire to avoid going back to the country means Mrs May will be allowed to bed down this new minority government.

But her position will never be properly secure — she will always be just one slip-up from removal. “It’s not a given that she’ll make it to the end of July,” I’m told.

Senior Tories are also clear that she cannot lead the party into another General Election campaign.

One of the other things helping Mrs May is that there is no obvious successor.

Remain Tories worry that Boris Johnson will intensify any Brexit backlash, while Amber Rudd only just managed to hold her own seat, and being Prime Minister while representing an ultra-marginal constituency would be extremely difficult.

The other possible contender, , was the minister who pushed Mrs May hardest to go for an early election, which is a mark against him.

Mrs May will also have to deal with even more Brexit argy-bargy. Several Remain- supporting Cabinet ministers regard the disappointing election result as, in the words of one, “an opportunity to change the policy”.

But Brexit backers in the Cabinet are clear that they regard the UK withdrawing from the single market and the customs union, allowing this country to take back control of immigration and make its own trade deals, as red-line issues.

Mrs May has thrown away a golden opportunity to secure the largest Tory majority in 30 years.

Instead she has plunged the party into an unstable governing arrangement which will struggle to get anything done.

She will need to show not only the party, but also the country, that she has learned her lesson.

James Forsyth is political editor of The Spectator.