May’s team fail to learn from mistakes

AS SHE enjoys a walking holiday in Wales this weekend, Theresa May’s political position is more secure than it has been for months — capped by her adroit handling of Brexit and her garnering of an international coalition against Russia in response to poison attacks on British soil.

It is a pity, therefore, that Downing Street’s media team should be so contemptuous in their treatment of a request from Wales’s national paper, the Western Mail, for an interview with the Prime Minister.

They allowed the paper’s chief reporter just one question, asked him to submit it in advance, and then gave a meaningless answer.

The message is that Downing Street only really cares about fashionable London-based TV journalists such as Andrew Marr and Robert Peston.

What they fail to understand is that the further you travel from the internationalised liberal classes of the capital — such as to Brecon, Monmouth and Montgomeryshire — the stronger Mrs May’s support.

This episode is a reminder of why the Conservatives conducted such an inept general election campaign last year.