TORIES HAVE NO DESIRE TO OUST THERESA MAY

THIS Thursday’s rising of the Commons for Parliament’s long summer break cannot come a moment too soon for Tory MPs. They are still exhausted after the general election campaign and remain despondent at the result.

“We all need to get away from Westminster and have a proper wind down,” one backbencher told me, adding: “It has been a truly rotten few months.”

Few are expecting the peace of the holiday season to be broken by the noise of leadership plots buzzing away on mobile phones and computer devices. Any talk of replacing Theresa May in the near future fizzled out before many had even settled their getaway plans.

“Apart from literally one or two individuals, no one is talking about changing the leadership,” another senior Tory MP said. “A leadership contest means a general election and people are petrified about that. It’s just not going to happen.

“Whatever they think about the election, almost everyone is agreed we need Theresa to stay.”

Among Tory MPs the most popular view appears to be that the Prime Minister is safe at least until Britain’s scheduled exit from the EU in March 2019. The one scenario that could shatter that timetable is a sudden decision by Mrs May to quit.

“She must be worn out by the last few months, she has had a ghastly time and the parliamentary warfare in the autumn is going to be bloody,” another Tory insider said. “She could hardly be blamed for deciding she just can’t face it.”

Friends of the Prime Minister insist that her deep sense of duty and personal commitment to delivering the historic Brexit mission mean she is not contemplating a shock departure. Yet MPs know that the Prime Minister is capable of a surprise decision, as her ill-fated snap election showed.

She came up with that idea while hill walking in North Wales during the Easter break. Mrs May has said that her beloved hikes can “give you that moment of clarity you need to make those important decisions”.

Some in her party are beginning to nervously wonder whether she could come to another momentous conclusion about her future during another upland hike in the fresh air this summer.