Mrs May’s time at Number 10 is not quite up

SAFE FOR NOW: The PM’s credibility is damaged but not destroyed opposition’s ability to mobilise an army of activists to drown out our messages,” another MP told me.

Thoughtful party insiders want time to modernise the Tory election machine and to counter the swing to the Left among younger voters. “We have been acting as if the argument for popular, free-market capitalism has already been won. It hasn’t and we need to start making the case again,” the MP added.

At Westminster the game of speculating about Mrs May’s successor has already begun. Yet Tory MPs are talking about a figure from the coming generation emerging over a matter of years rather than months.

SCOTTISH Tory leader Ruth Davidson, who is not in the Commons at present and has denied ambitions for the job, and Dominic Raab, a staunch Brexiteer who returned to the Tory frontbench this week, are among those mentioned but there are others. “The field is wide open at the moment,” another MP told me.

The long-term thinking about the leadership and the state of the party among MPs suggests the Prime Minister is safe for the foreseeable future as long as she can confirm the backing of the 10 MPs from Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party to prop up her minority Government.

Mrs May will be a caretaker leader who will have to focus on key challenges such as Brexit rather than a programme of radical social reform.

She will also be in thrall to a newly emboldened Cabinet. For all those limitations though, Mrs May is not disappearing beneath the sands quite yet.