Regardless of this deal, we need a new PM

At this moment in our history, we desperately need a prime minister with vision and charisma

The Conservatives should drop Theresa May as Prime Minister, and not just because of Brexit. Yes, the Withdrawal Agreement is bad and, yes, that’s the immediate cause of backbench rebellion, but the deal is also a symbol of everything that’s gone wrong for two years. Mrs May is a really poor PM.

Let’s start with her obsession with detail to the cost of clarity. Last week I was on BBC Question Time with a Government minister, who demanded to know if I’d read the Withdrawal Agreement. Honestly, the answer is no: and I bet she hadn’t either. The truth is, it’s unreadable. It’s written in such dense, lawyerly language that it might as well be in Mandarin, which is fine because that’s how these things are supposed to be. In a representative democracy, you and I are not expected to read and master international treaties. Ministers set the goals; civil servants do the spade work; the PM sells it. Mrs May does not understand this important division of labour.

This is partly because she doesn’t respect Cabinet government; the lady is a control freak. For the past two years, No10 has created departments, given ministers jobs and then, behind the scenes, done its own thing – destroying confidence among Brexiteers. Two ministers have quit as head of the Department for Exiting the EU; the latest appointment, Stephen Barclay, has been informed that he will mostly be dealing with the “domestic” side of Brexit, which is like being told you will be covering the agricultural element of defence. Serial resignations are a verdict on the authority of a PM. Ted Heath took Britain into Europe and pulled off one U-turn after another, yet in four grim years not a single minister resigned from his Cabinet over a matter of policy.

Heath led by strength of character; vision is an alternative quality, but Mrs May has none. I do not know how we will explain to future generations that the Brexit negotiations were led by a woman who campaigned against Brexit and failed to say if she would vote for it the next time round. Her voice should ring with confidence in Britain’s post-eu future; we need to hear that everything’s going to be OK. Instead, her speeches and interviews on the agreement (delivered almost exclusively by herself – again, where is the rest of the team?) have been leaden with detail that, to repeat at the risk of sounding thick, doesn’t make sense. The deal needs interpretation into a simple vision, but Mrs May utterly rejects coherent philosophy.

Beyond Brexit, what does she stand for? She’s not a classical liberal (big tax cuts and free trade are out) and not a libertarian (the sugar tax is in); social conservatism is anathema to her. Perhaps the absence of ideology speaks to the Tory historic tradition of “safety first”, but the resignations suggest chaos, not order, and she has done nothing to reunite the country around One Nation values. We are practically at each other’s throats. Mrs May’s defenders have fallen back on the last refuge of decent men: chivalry. “Do my colleagues not understand,” asked Nick Boles MP, “how normal people react when they see a group of middle-aged men, led by two plummytoned Old Etonians, trying to bully a conscientious and determined woman out of her job?”

Well, Mr Boles (Winchester College, middle-aged, male) it all depends on the job. The way he put it makes Mrs May sound like a lady on the till at Lidl being berated by an angry customer with an out-of-date haddock – but she’s not, she is Prime Minister. The notion of a PM being kept in office not just by loyalty or lack of alternative but by sympathy is surreal – an Ealing comedy of middle-class manners. It’s that “muddling-through”, “never complain” mentality that saw us put up with the EU’S nonsense for decades, creating an aura of British compliance that meant, when 52 per cent of us did vote to leave, the establishment, including Mrs May, was genuinely taken by surprise.

“We thought the British took what they were given?” No. We are a polite and sympathetic nation but we also have a tradition of radicals and window-breakers. Brexit was an alliance of the impatient. Mrs May asked them to vote for her, to give them what they want, and they did; now she is testing their patience. The backstop proposal is the most Mayite thing ever: in the event of Brexit going wrong, which she probably assumes it will, we will stay exactly where we are and do absolutely nothing. Even if it kills us.

I regret sincerely having to write in such direct terms about Mrs May. She is a good person; like all democratic leaders, she reflects a part of us. She told an interviewer that at the height of the resignations crisis, she took time out for beans on toast with her husband. “Then it was downstairs for a quick meeting and home by 9.30pm so I could get the washing on and leave it to dry overnight.” She is always precise; I do not think she lies. It’s just that she gives almost nothing away and the truth is underwhelming.

At any other moment in history, we might look at this PM and say, with pride: “What little you see is what you get.” But this is no ordinary time. It requires charisma and the ability to articulate the bigger picture. It demands a new prime minister.