Make hay, Mrs May, while you have the chance

Everything looks good for the PM at the moment, but she should heed the lessons of Gordon Brown

Theresa May has enjoyed quite a honeymoon in the 100 days since she swept the nation off its collective feet, leaving her rival suitors coughing in the dust. From the chaos of those unsettling weeks after the shock of the referendum vote, when even those who had argued for it most strongly seemed to have no clue how to proceed, the Prime Minister has brought us to a place of confidence and stability, largely through the sheer force of her personality.

We may be no clearer about where Brexit will take us, or how we will get there, but at least someone is in charge at the top, a grown-up cleaning up the mess the overprivileged schoolboys left behind. The nation’s love-in with its new leader should form the basis of a strong and lasting marriage.

Under the walking tragedy that is Jeremy Corbyn, Labour trails the Conservatives by an extraordinary 18 points in the polls. Having achieved its primary aim of quitting the European Union, Ukip seems to have imploded, its existential crisis directly benefiting the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats remain in intensive care. Only in Scotland does Mrs May face an opposition worthy of the name.

Given the most benign electoral picture for decades, Mrs May enjoys a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape the nation in ways her immediate predecessors could only have dreamed of. But despite this, she seems to shrink from sketching out a bold vision of what that future nation might be.

Many have suggested that this reticence is a hallmark of Mrs May’s inherent caution, which often sees her spin out decisions to a point where officials and fellow ministers are tearing their hair out in frustration. Protracted agonising over Hinkley Point and Heathrow is par for a woman who at the Home Office was feted for taking her time to make up her mind over such thorny issues as the extradition to the US of the Scottish computer hacker Gary McKinnon.

But it has perhaps been underappreciated that, throughout her career, Mrs May has also been prepared to act swiftly and unexpectedly – the 2002 “Nasty Party” speech to Conservative Conference and the grievous bodily harm she committed on the Police Federation in 2014 among the more memorable examples.

At No 10, Mrs May has already been similarly brave. Her appointment of the “Three Brexiteers” was breathtaking in its audacity, at a stroke quelling any mutterings in her party about the ability of a Remainer to oversee divorce from the EU, and also ensuring that the Conservatives directly benefited in the polls from Ukip’s implosion.

The PM may feel she does not have a manifesto mandate for a bold new agenda of lower taxes and deregulation, but she is also clearly reluctant to call an early election. Why? The answer lies with the high principles this vicar’s daughter has always sought to live by. She is against clever political wheezes. Just this week, Downing Street slapped down a suggestion by the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, that foreign students be excluded from the immigration figures. During Mrs May’s time at the Home Office, she always resisted this on the grounds that it is something of a fiddle. Similarly, at a time when Brexit is so all-consuming, she feels it would be wrong, morally, to put the interests of her party ahead of those of the country by calling a distracting general election.

The danger with these high principles is that Mrs May forgets the crucial lesson of the last child of a minister to occupy No 10: Gordon Brown. He too enjoyed something of a honeymoon in the months after he became prime minister in 2007. In many ways, despite clumsy attempts to compare her with that other iron lady, Margaret Thatcher, it is Mr Brown whom Mrs May most resembles among her recent prime ministerial predecessors: workaholic, socially awkward, driven by a profound morality, a devotee of One Nationism.

So today, though all may seem rosy for Mrs May as she surveys the view from her honeymoon sunlounger, she should remember the lesson of Mr Brown: once the suntan fades, sustaining a relationship with the fickle British electorate is far harder than it may appear at the golden outset.

The potential scenarios for divorce are many: the difficulties of holding together a tiny majority exacerbated by the PM’s Sphinx-like refusal to show some leg on the Brexit negotiations. The possibility that Labour might come to its senses and jettison Corbyn. A revival by the Lib Dems, and Ukip. The dire prospect that the doom and gloom promised by George Osborne and his fellow Remain naysayers actually comes true.

Whatever occurs over the next three-and-a-half years, only one thing is certain: there will never be a better time for the Conservatives to announce a bold agenda. To quote Tony Blair’s taunt to Gordon Brown, leaders are at their best when they are at their boldest. To ensure she does not share Mr Brown’s fate, Theresa May must heed that lesson as he never did.