An apologetic PM? Seems unlikely
May won’t grovel at the Conservative conference
Prime Minister Theresa May is a long way from being a ‘dead woman walking’ CAN you picture the scene: A contrite Theresa May on the stool of penitence pleading forgiveness at the forthcoming Conservative Party conference for her catastrophic misjudgment in calling last June’s general election?
Personally, I don’t see it like that. I expect her to make some kind of apology to the party’s activists, but she is not, as some commentators are suggesting, a groveller. And she is a long way from being “dead woman walking” as described by the former Chancellor George Osborne.
It is far more likely that she is a Prime Minister who, although not attempting to sweep this miscalculation under the carpet, will be more interested in looking forward rather than holding painful inquests on past mistakes.
Things are starting to look up a little within the Conservative ranks. And about time, too. The Chancellor, Philip Hammond, who had created some turmoil in the Cabinet and elsewhere in the Tory Party with his campaign for a softer than soft Brexit – seen by some as treachery – appears to have suddenly altered his view.
We may never know whether there was any pressure put on him to change his stance, but however it happened, there will be sighs of relief from the Prime Minister. Even so, there remain elements in the Parliamentary Conservative Party who regret the Chancellor’s action and they will want to make their views known loud and clear.
So I think those who are still predicting a political bloodbath at the Tory conference are wrong.
Even the most hard-line anti-Brexiteers must now realise that to rock the Tory boat at the moment could leave them all floundering in the water, facing another, and much worse, electoral disaster.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn, so seriously under-estimated by the Tories and even by many of his own colleagues, surprised everyone with his impressive election campaign.
He will not get a standing ovation at the Labour conference – they don’t do that sort of thing – but even the most grudging Labour “moderate” should acknowledge the performance of this hard-line left-winger.
CHRIS MONCRIEFF