EU fat cats think Theresa May is on the ropes — but she’s still fighting to win and get a decent Brexit deal for Britain

WHEN you hit rock bottom, the only options are to bounce back or give up the ghost.

That is where Theresa May stands today after a disastrous General Election and a nightmare party conference.

Ministers are plotting and Brussels has scented blood in the water.

The Prime Minister can either surrender to slow political death or go for broke.

There are many urgent issues facing her Government and the Tory Party, which for decades has neglected its own members and its core mission — economic competence.

It needs to pick up the pieces left by David Cameron and George Osborne after they chose Tony Blair’s economic free-for-all over sound Thatcherite housekeeping.

It is now Chancellor Philip Hammond’s task to breathe life back into capitalism and sound money in next month’s Autumn Budget.

But the Prime Minister’s challenge is to pick up the pace and take total command of Brexit.

She will be judged on the success or failure of Britain’s inevitable departure. A botched operation will leave Britain perpetually picking at an open sore.

If signals emerging from Downing Street are correct, Mrs May has already seized the initiative.

In private conversations in Manchester last week, it emerged that the PM has hardened her resolve against any compromise that leaves Britain painfully half in and half out of the EU.

There was even encouragement for newspapers such as The Sun to pile more pressure on the Government’s stance against Brussels negotiators Michel Barnier and Jean-Claude Juncker.

We were advised media demands for urgent and decisive action were “helpful”.

“They read the British press in Brussels,” one senior minister stressed.

Crucially, Mrs May has resolved the UK must do more than simply “look at” plans for coping with an increasingly likely cliff-edge No Deal.

Hammond has finally been persuaded to unleash billions of pounds on physical preparations for the likelihood that talks run out of road by Christmas.

This means beefing up port and airport facilities, air traffic control technology, Border Force immigration and customs checks, HMRC tax computers and energy supply.

Ministers are studying systems used successfully between Canada and the US and between non-EU Norway and Sweden.

This is a remarkable change of mood for a Government which, until last week, opposed any such planning in case it offended Brussels.

Indeed, one die-hard Cabinet Remainer, who made a fortune in business before politics, was heard hailing Britain’s golden economic prospects once free from EU rules.

Tariff-free trade should slash prices, raise productivity and put more money in our pockets as competition places

consumers, not producers, in the driving seat.

Brexit also gives Britain freedom to suck in investment and boost exports by slashing taxes.

The prospect of a free-wheeling, low-tax UK economy terrifies EU leaders, whose inflexible single-currency gamble has inflicted mass unemployment on Europe’s youth.

Astonishingly, Hammond wanted this ruled out, stymying the PM’s most potent bargaining chip. This must not hold.

Mrs May’s weakness since the election and her ill-starred conference speech has been greeted with glee in Brussels.

Sir Nigel Sheinwald, once Our Man in Brussels, says EU chiefs are rubbing their hands at talk of a leadership challenge.

“The uncertainty about the balance of power and the personal authority of the Prime Minister is part of their calculations,” he says.

Mrs May needs to put them right. There is no immediate threat to her leadership and as long as she remains PM she holds all the cards — including a chance to restore authority in a reshuffle.

It would be a mistake to demote Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, the only minister in a grey Westminster sea with the balls to speak up for a bright post-Brexit Britain.

If he is moved, he must not be isolated from the fight.

Despite her setbacks, polls suggest the PM still has the overwhelming and growing support of the British public — on Brexit, at least.

They are the not-so-secret weapon in her battle for survival.