The Tories need a fully operational Mrs May

The PM will be defined by leaving the EU, but her team can still have a positive domestic agenda

Shortly before the summer recess, I was at a dinner with a dozen Conservative MPS to discuss the party’s future, or lack thereof. I spoke first and was rather optimistic: they’d all been saved, as I saw it, from an awful manifesto and what had started to look like a peculiar personality cult. But the ever-savvy electorate smelt a rat and demanded something better. So this was a chance for young MPS to provide it with fresh, original ideas.

They disagreed. No, they said, there was no bright side to this debacle. The party is a joke, the election a humiliation, their leader a dud. One MP, currently being tipped for the leadership, confessed that he now regrets ever standing for election. Another said it is time to accept that the party hasn’t won a proper victory since 1987 and it was fantasy to think it ever would again. Another MP said the manifesto was so depressing that it made him wonder what point there was in living, let alone standing for re-election. Had hemlock been on the menu that night, they’d have ordered it with the desserts.

This explains the rather muted reaction to Theresa May saying that she intends to fight the next general election. Tory MPS have far too much to worry about to think about May 2022. Their main concern is not the leader their party has, but the many things it does not have: momentum, ideas, purpose, direction, raison d’etre.

As Michael Heseltine puts it, the Tories are looking for both a singer and a song – and after a summer of karaoke, they don’t have either. So Mrs May stays until they do.

No one expects another May versus Corbyn rematch, but you can see why she feels the need to declare herself ready for battle. What else is she to say? In Japan yesterday she repeated that she’s here for the “long term” – precisely the right attitude, and perhaps her first proper act of leadership since the general election. A prime minister keen to lead the party and country is the only prime minister worth having. But if she wishes to look like the leader of her Cabinet, rather than its hostage, she has much more to do.

A leader picks a team, and Mrs May will need to move some ministers around – if only to show that she still can. Her failure to do so after the election led to the idea that she’s too weak to move anyone. “A lot of my colleagues think we’ve got a job for life,” one Cabinet member tells me. Such complacency needs to be challenged, as does the idea that she rewards loyalty over ability. She has a duty to instead promote fresh talent, to show younger MPS that they can progress under her. And so her party, ever on the hunt for talent, can see what these successors are (or aren’t) made of.

She can then grant more freedom to her Cabinet colleagues, letting them adopt their own agenda – especially where different to her own. There is no great danger of a Tory split, no equivalent of modernisers versus traditionalists. So there’s scope, for example, to allow Amber Rudd at the Home Office to look at the much-mocked net migration target to see if there’s a more sensible way of managing things. She has already revised the stop-and-search rules for police. Soon, she might look like a real Home Secretary.

Justine Greening should also be released from her instruction to revive grammar schools, and instead build on the far-greater success of Tory free schools. The GCSE and A-level results highlighted the extraordinary progress of places such as Tauheedul Islam Boys’ High School in Blackburn and Dixons Trinity Academy in Bradford. The success is that of the teachers, but would not have been possible had Tories not placed faith in them. Someone should make that point.

It is also time for something radical on housing. For decades, politicians have fought elections promising to build more houses – but the grand plans and promises have come to virtually nothing. When the average home costs almost 10 times the average salary, the young end up abandoning the Tories en masse.

The housing conundrum has become a metaphor for an economy rigged in favour of the old and wealthy. Without doing something drastic on housing, the Conservatives will lose the next election, no matter who is leading.

So perhaps it’s time to try state intervention, over-ruling local authorities who deny planning permission. Perhaps creating a new home building agency to help ambitious home builders, and try to fix the broken land market. This is complicated, the task is momentous, but there is time. The next election will not come for another five years. Britain won a world war in six.

The Prime Minister herself will be defined by Brexit, and here there is no substitute for her personal leadership. Her strategy is admirably clear: that Britain will strike a deal to leave in March 2019 and then enter a transition phase before the new deal starts.

But what if there is no deal?

The EU has an appalling record in negotiating, and talks may fail. Even if they don’t, a deal might be vetoed by judges in Luxembourg or politicians in Wallonia. Oxford Economics, one of the consultancies following the Brexit talks, now says that there is a one-in-four chance of talks ending with no deal.

So where is the contingency plan? There is no sign of it – which is odd, given how much is at stake. Some trace the impasse to HM Treasury and Philip Hammond, who hates all mention of the topic. Those who have spoken to him about this say he suspects that, if a no-deal plan is drawn up, it will be activated by Brexiteers who never wanted a deal in the first place. This is where Prime Ministerial grip is required. Even if there’s a one-in-20 chance of talks failing, the Government ought to be fully prepared. To have no plans, because of ideology, would be unforgivable.

For this and many other reasons, the Tories need a fully operational Mrs May. They need to look like a coherent party with a competent government and plausible leader: one who reshuffles cabinets, sets goals, talks about the future. And, yes, one who says – when asked – that she has no departure date in sight.