Here’s three ways Theresa May can show the Conservative Party that she’s still the boss
Between now and Christmas, the Prime Minister needs to show that situation is improving
WHEN Theresa May updates the Commons on the Brexit negotiations on Monday, her own side will give her a hero’s welcome.
They’ll roar “hear her, hear her” at every point she makes.
But no one should confuse this support for a widespread and genuine desire to see things carry on as they are. Between now and Christmas, Theresa May needs to show that the situation is improving.
As several Cabinet ministers have admitted to me in the past few days, things cannot go on as they are for the next 18 months.
The first thing that May needs to demonstrate is that she really wants to do the job.
There is a worry among Tory MPs that May’s sense of duty is so strong that she will stay on even if she is being crushed by the burdens of office.
As one Tory puts it: “It doesn’t feel as disloyal to say she should go now. All week, she didn’t look like she was enjoying it.
“If she does something, where she looks well and like she is enjoying it, then that could turn things round. But if it carries on like this, people will wonder if it is fair to keep her there.”
Now, it should be noted that those who work with May in Number 10 are adamant that she wants to carry on, that she is relishing the job.
But she needs to show that.
Next, May needs a big, bold domestic agenda. Even if it hadn’t been for all the disasters that hit it, May’s conference speech would still have been insufficient to the moment.
She is right to make fixing the broken housing market her domestic mission. But to do that, she is going to have to be much more radical. As even one of those who has been out defending her most aggressively on the airwaves in the last 48 hours admits: “Those around her have to tell her that we need some big ideas.”
Finally, May needs to do a Cabinet reshuffle. This would prove that she still has the authority to hire and fire and would put ministers on notice that they have to perform.
It would also enable her to bring in some fresh blood.
This is urgently needed because too many ministers have begun to think like civil servants, seeing only problems and never solutions.
Politics, as May said, has become a battle of ideas again and the Tories cannot win that with a Cabinet of technocrats.
If May can do these things, she can lead the country — and the Tories — through the Brexit talks. After all, the alternative — changing leader — would be hugely destabilising as there is no obvious, accepted successor.
But perhaps the biggest danger is that May doesn’t do these things while the alternative remains too risky and the Tories have more weeks like this one.
As one Cabinet minister warns: “They’ve got to either try and actually kill her off or shut up. This dragging on will be awful for the Tory brand.”
If all this leadership speculation does continue, the Tories won’t be able to take on Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour, and his position will strengthen.
The spotlight on the Tories will also prevent proper scrutiny of Labour’s positions.
“We need to give them space to hang themselves. But we’re in that space now,” laments one Cabinet minister.
One member of May’s inner circle argues that they should now publicly name David Jones, the Brexit minister who May sacked after the election, for trying to arrange May’s removal and a coronation.
They think that getting the plot out there would weaken it, as it has with the Grant Shapps-led effort, and allow Number 10 to reassert control.
May will carry on for now, for the same reasons that she survived after the election: There is no agreed alternative.
If Tory MPs “knew what they wanted, she’d be gone,” admit one of those charged with keeping her in place. But they don’t.
- James Forsyth is political editor of The Spectator
Opposites detract for Bo-Jo
BORIS JOHNSON and Philip Hammond are temperamental opposites.
The Foreign Secretary is a big-picture man, a risk-taker and an instinctive optimist.
The Chancellor is a cautious master of detail, whose instinct is to prepare for the worst.
As one Cabinet minister laments, these contrasting styles could be helpful to the Government’s Brexit approach if their differences were kept behind closed doors.
But they are not.
Who’s blocking who? After the conference, one minister who backs May’s agenda, complained to me that the Treasury had blocked measures that would have given the speech more oomph, and watered down the housing announcement that she did make.
Officially, Number 10 deny that they are unhappy with the Treasury. But there is clearly tension between the two.
One influential Treasury figure told me this week that May’s speech contained no policies that would make the country richer.
These tensions must be resolved before the Budget on November 22.
For that is the next best chance for the Government to show that it has a proper domestic policy agenda.
Cabinet anger over energy cap snub
THERE is real Cabinet irritation that Theresa May didn’t talk to them before announcing an energy price cap in her conference speech. Number 10 points out it was in the manifesto so there was no need to.
But ministers complain that they thought the idea had been junked along with various other manifesto commitments. They say that if May is serious about a more collegiate style of government, then she should have consulted with them before announcing it.
We need a minister for ‘no deal’
FORGET the Grant Shapps plot. The biggest danger to Theresa May’s leadership is the EU Council in a fortnight’s time.
Brexiteer ministers are increasingly concerned that Olly Robbins, the Prime Minister’s Europe adviser, is paving the way for big concessions in an effort to get the EU to declare that “sufficient progress” has been made to move on to negotiating the EU/UK trade deal.
Or, to at least admit that trade talks can be scoped as part of the existing discussions.
They are concerned that with Robbins now solely in Number 10 – his time used to be split between there and the Department for Exiting the European Union – he is pushing internally for major compromises to try to get the talks moving.
One warns that if too many concessions are made “the bottom will fall out of the bucket” and the Government would be in danger.
This minister points out that “the thing that would really do for Theresa is if the ERG pulled the plug”, a reference to the 60-strong European Research Group of Tory MPs who favour a clean Brexit.
Part of the problem is that the Government negotiation position is being weakened by the lack of preparation for a no-deal scenario. If Britain isn’t ready for that, Theresa May cannot walk away from the table and will have to swallow whatever the EU demands.
If Mrs May wants to keep her mantra that “no deal is better than a bad deal” credible, she needs to turbo-charge preparations for it.
She should appoint a Secretary of State for No Deal and put them in personal charge of getting the country ready.
Without that, Britain’s negotiating hand will be significantly weakened.
