It will be up to the next inhabitant of 10 Downing Street to pull the Tories back from the brink
SIR – The next leader of the Conservative Party has an unenviable task ahead. Bringing the party together will be as difficult as the Brexit negotiations, and the outcome just as unpredictable. Philip Everall
Crewe, Cheshire
SIR – Theresa May may finally have thrown in the towel – but who could possibly do a better job?
Trying to address the deep divisions within our country created by Brexit is a monumental challenge. It’s a brave man or woman who believes that they can steer us out of this sorry state. Kirsty Blunt
Sedgeford, Norfolk
SIR – The quiet dignity shown by Larry the cat on the doorstep of No 10 prior to Theresa May’s resignation speech is what I would wish for in the next prime minister – but wishes are just that. Mike Penberth
Soham, Cambridgeshire
SIR – It is a glaring example of the self-seeking arrogance of the current Conservative Members of Parliament that there are reputedly 15 of them who think that the country would like them to be our prime minister.
I can’t think of one. Barbara Whitaker
Halton, Buckinghamshire
SIR – Why, in heaven’s name, would anyone actually wish to become leader of such a disloyal and dysfunctional organisation as the Conservative and Unionist Party? Chris Banks
Edlesborough, Buckinghamshire
SIR – The field for party leader seems somewhat crowded.
I suggest that the weeding mechanism needed is to disqualify any MP who voted for any of Mrs May’s abortive attempts to push through her non-brexit deal.
That should thin things out nicely. Andrew C Pierce
Barnstaple, Devon
SIR – I have a message for those contenders for the Tory leadership who fancy themselves as qualified to take on not just the EU and the Labour Party, but also the rapidly growing support for Nigel Farage.
If Boris Johnson, the party members’ favourite, is not one of the two candidates put before them, then the Conservatives can expect mass defections to the Brexit Party and will effectively be consigned to the history books. The first chapter of the Conservatives’ demise has already been written by their recently resigned, incompetent leader, and by those within her Cabinet who could have forced her from office much earlier. This should automatically rule them out as contenders. David Rammell
Everton, Hampshire
SIR – After three years with a Prime Minister who had no charisma and was not even a good manager, I agree with Fraser Nelson (Comment, May 24) that Boris Johnson represents the Tories’ best chance to appoint a leader with proven ability to enthuse both the party membership and wider audiences. None of the other likely candidates comes anywhere near him.
However, assuming there isn’t a Westminster stitch-up to prevent him being among the names put to the membership, what we emphatically don’t need is a one-candidate coronation of the kind to which Mr Nelson alludes. This is what we were presented with last time, with disastrous results, and it would merely be confirmation of the fact that too many MPS think the choice is essentially theirs, and that the views of the membership don’t matter. This attitude, you could say, underlies the mess we are now in over Brexit. Roger White
Sherborne, Dorset
SIR – In this whole sorry saga, arguably the most pertinent comment was that of Kenneth Clarke when he referred to the Prime Minister as “a bloody difficult woman”. She was happy to accept the description. We cannot say that we were not warned.
Mrs May is one of a large majority in Parliament who have been increasingly happy to cede powers and decision-making to the EU. They have known nothing else during their time in politics. To them, independent self-government is but a footnote in our history. This mindset goes a long way towards explaining the behaviour of Mrs May and most of her Cabinet. The Telegraph has described it as a national emergency, and few would disagree, citing Mrs May’s strange mix of timidity and pig-headedness. Eddie Hooper
Gravesend, Kent
SIR – When the history of Theresa May’s premiership is written, her handling of Brexit will have some competition to be the worst disaster.
The Windrush scandal, the treatment of veterans and her reaction to the Grenfell Tower fire will all be recalled. Mark Robbins
Bruton, Somerset
SIR – Even in her resignation speech, Mrs May failed to recognise that she was the only person responsible for her demise. I cannot think of any other leader, in any field, who has shown such a total absence of self-awareness. Robin Humphreys
Exmouth, Devon
SIR – I am pleased that Mrs May has finally come to her senses and announced the date of her resignation.
It has been a while since we had a street party. Let’s hope the weather holds. Margaret Scattergood
Solihull
SIR – Mrs May delivered a dignified resignation speech. In it she focused a lot on the necessity of compromise.
She is entirely correct that compromise is important, and an increasingly lost skill in an age dominated by dogma and intransigence. However, what she has failed to recognise throughout her premiership is that compromise requires both parties involved to change their position. Shifting your position while those opposite you do nothing is called concession – and that, unfortunately, is how she will be remembered. Calum Platts
Cambridge SIR – Many of your correspondents writing about Theresa May continue to stick the knife in even as she is on the point of going – but I would like to congratulate her on doing her best in an impossible situation, bequeathed to her by David Cameron. Our country is now divided, the Union is at risk and everyone is fed up and demoralised.
A new prime minister will inherit the same intransigence in Brussels and the same polarised party and country, an even more poisoned chalice. Good luck to him or her. Jane O’nions
Sevenoaks, Kent
SIR – Does anyone else feel that it is not Mrs May who should be pilloried, but our childlike representatives in the House of Commons? Stuart Cresswell
Keswick, Cumbria
SIR – There is one person who has emerged unscathed from this whole affair, and he is Philip May. He may well not have consumed quite as many snifters as Denis Thatcher, but he’s never put a foot wrong. Andrew Lyle
Taunton, Somerset
SIR – Jeremy Warner (Comment, May 24) laments the absence of “worthwhile initiatives and ideas” from the Government during the past three years, as MPS have been preoccupied with Brexit. Perhaps it is no coincidence that most of the country’s important economic indicators have improved considerably over this period, and we have outperformed the EU.
There is surely a Conservative lesson to be re-learnt here – less government meddling is good for us. Christopher Timbrell
Kington Langley, Wiltshire
SIR – Martin Stroud (Letters, May 24) quotes Lord Sacks’s suggestion that “the problem today is that politicians are too immersed in politics”.
I think the problem stems from the belief of too many career politicians – of all political persuasions – that they are our rulers, rather than servants who have been given a temporary loan of power. Don Webber
Bembridge, Isle of Wight
SIR – Since the 2017 general election the Conservative Party has been living a lie. Brexit has been promised repeatedly, but in reality a coterie of fanatical Remainers around an instinctively Remainer Prime Minister, along with allies in Cabinet and on the backbenches, have been determined to frustrate its meaningful delivery.
Numerous earlier occasions arose when Mrs May should have been summarily ejected, but the Remainers exploited both loyalty and weakness within the parliamentary party to keep her in place.
Now, however, we are at the crunch point. If Conservatives are to have any hope of keeping Jeremy Corbyn out of Downing Street, they must demonstrate to a now understandably sceptical electorate that they are a conviction party and will deliver Brexit. To achieve this end, it is not only Theresa May who has to go. Terry Smith
London NW1
SIR – Not all of the 17.4 million who voted Leave in the 2016 referendum are Conservative voters, but we find ourselves relying on a Tory Government to implement our decision, which it correctly interpreted in its 2017 election manifesto as meaning taking the country out of the customs union, the single market and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
When the new leader sets out to negotiate anew with the EU, he or she must employ the basic principles of that art: do not let the other side set the agenda; assess your strengths and the weaknesses of the other side; have a position from which you will not renege; make sure the other side knows that you will walk away if the demands made of you are unreasonable, and be prepared to do so if necessary; have a clear, wellprepared contingency position if no agreement can be reached; give no final agreement to any document, and make no financial commitment of any kind that seriously compromises the cardinal points of no customs union, no single market, and no membership of the ECJ; and do not put an unelected civil servant in charge of negotiations.
I can understand some of the kind words towards at Mrs May in her hour of humiliation, but the reality is that she seemingly had no idea of these principles – hence how a Prime Minister dependent upon the Democratic Unionist Party for her House of Commons majority could return with an Irish border backstop to which the DUP could never agree. Jim Sillars
Edinburgh
SIR – Listening to Nicky Morgan and others discussing Brexit in the wake of Mrs May’s resignation announcement, it is as if Conservatives continue to believe, misguidedly, that whatever they decide among themselves matters in the slightest.
It does not. The EU has made it clear that the choice is between Mrs May’s Withdrawal Agreement – which has been voted down three times – or nothing. Andrew Norman
Poole, Dorset
SIR – It would seem that a number of Conservative MPS, in order to prevent a no-deal exit from the EU, would prefer to trigger a general election. This would very likely result in a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn and John Mcdonnell.
Presumably these same MPS, in order to prevent their home from being burgled, would prefer to see it burnt to the ground. Bruce Boulden
Halstead, Essex
SIR – As a British citizen who has lived in Germany since 1972, I shall be sad when this Brexit drama finally finishes.
Watching the debates in the House of Commons has been the most entertaining television I have seen in years, and I will particularly miss the Speaker’s calls for order. The sound of “Ord-er!” now echoes around our house whenever the younger grandchildren visit, much to the confusion of our German neighbours. Dr John F W Morgan
Sipplingen, Bodenseekreis, Germany