Calls for PM’s exit plan must be resisted
every platform speech. The wisest among Mrs May’s allies will know that talk about a departure timetable is really a ploy to weaken her by turning her into a short-term caretaker. In politics, demands for a retirement date are invariably a proxy for overt calls for a leader’s head.
Under the last Labour government, Gordon Brown’s thuggish henchmen perpetually demanded a handover plan from Tony Blair. They claimed that all they wanted was a smooth and orderly transition and insisted the actual time of departure was entirely up to the prime minister. Yet from the moment Mr Blair even admitted to having a departure date in his own mind, his authority disintegrated. He was rapidly forced to announce the date and play out a miserable final year as a fading has-been.
IT IS a bitter lesson from history that Mrs May’s team will do well to heed. Most leadership speculation among MPs at the moment focuses on the coming generation rather than the current crop of Cabinet ministers. The moment the Prime Minister identifies the time to go, the next leadership contest will be unleashed and will consume the Government.
Mrs May can still achieve the herculean mission ahead of her, of delivering Britain’s exit from the EU; any admission that her own exit is being prepared will only weaken her Government in the negotiations with Brussels.
For the good of the country, the Prime Minister should shut her ears to any advisers suggesting that setting out a timetable for Mexit might be a good idea.