Guess who’s REALLY pulling Theresa’s strings

ALK into Downing Street at the moment and the place is buzzing. All is energy and activity. The administrative logjam created by the EU referendum has finally been broken. ‘Action this day!’ is Whitehall’s new rallying cry.

Yet at the same time a vacuum is developing. And it is developing around the Prime Minister’s desk.

The announcement last week that the Government plans to lift the ban on grammar schools left Ministers, MPs and civil servants scratching their heads, wondering where it had come from.

A quick Google search and they had their answer – an interview that Theresa May’s new joint chief of staff, Nick Timothy, had given in 2015 in which he declared: ‘A new wave of academically selective grammar schools should be created to give parents more choice.’

Two weeks earlier, MPs, civil servants and journalists had also been stunned when No10 announced – contrary to all expectations – that a final decision to build the first new nuclear power plant in Britain for a generation, at Hinkley Point in Somerset, had been postponed.

Again they looked for an explanation. Again, a quick Google search provided the answer – an article by Timothy from last October in which he issued a graphic warning that Chinese investment in the Hinkley project risked ‘allowing a hostile state easy access to the country’s critical national infrastructure’.

YESTERDAY I was discussing Theresa May’s first speech on the steps of No10 with one of her Cabinet Ministers. She had, I said, surprised me with her strongly socially progressive narrative. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘that’s all Nick Timothy.’

Over the past month we have heard a lot about Timothy. His working class Birmingham upbringing. His own passion for social mobility. His unflinching loyalty to May.

We’ve heard a fair bit about Fiona Hill, as well.

She is May’s other joint chief of staff, a former Sky News journalist with a formidable reputation for driving through May’s agenda when they worked together at the Home Office.

Collectively, Timothy and Hill are already being described as May’s ‘gate-keepers’ – or at least that’s what they’re being called by some people having trouble getting through the gate.

‘If you look at the first Cabinet meeting, Nick and Fiona made a point of sitting directly behind Theresa,’ said one Cabinet Minister. ‘Ed Llewellyn [David Cameron’s chief of staff] would always make himself scarce, or at least make sure he didn’t get in the pictures. They were making a statement.’

If we have heard a lot about Timothy, and a fair bit about Hill, the one person we haven’t heard that much about is May herself. And that is starting to create a problem.

Precisely who is Theresa May? What is her guiding philosophy? What is underpinning the decisions she is making on behalf of the country? Most importantly, when is the country going to be granted an insight into her thinking, rather than the thinking of her senior advisers? This vacuum is partly a product of circumstance. The sudden truncation of the leadership election robbed May of the opportunity to set out her intellectual stall.

It is also a product of her time at the Home Office, a department where circumspection and discretion are a core part of the ethos, as well as a reflection of her desire to retrench into a more traditional and reserved model of governance.

Nor are Timothy and Hill guilty of self-aggrandisement. One senior adviser to Cameron spoke warmly of his successors. ‘They’re both really good people, and they’re serious people. They’ve got a different set of priorities to us, but they know what they’re doing. And they’d die in a ditch for Theresa.’

GIVEN the fate that befell Cameron, such fealty is both understandable and commendable. But the reality is that people are going to need to see and hear more from May than at present. ‘What I think is, she’s a vicar’s daughter with a very strong sense of fairness and natural justice,’ said one of her Cabinet Ministers. Then he added: ‘But to be honest, I don’t know any more about her than you do.’

Another spelled out what they already see as a gap opening between Downing Street and the other Government departments. ‘They already want to sign off on everything. Fine. But that means we need to be aligned with them. And at the moment we’re having to try to guess precisely what it is the PM wants.’

Opening up – to her colleagues and to the British people – isn’t going to be easy for the notoriously private May. One of the most remarkable aspects of her ascent is that it was achieved with the help of very few close parliamentary allies.

And anyone who saw the Michael Phelps-like death stare she directed at photographers during the arranged photoshoot that started her holiday would be in no doubt to what she thinks of the media.

But that isn’t the whole picture. Downing Street officials who met her as she toured their offices for the first time report being pleasantly surprised at her relaxed and informal demeanour.

‘She was enjoying some genuine banter with us all,’ says one. Another long-standing Downing Street aide says he has detected a distinct change in May since she took up residence in No10.

‘Before, it was David Cameron’s house, and she wasn’t that close to him. So I think she felt uncomfortable coming in here.

‘Now she’s looking much less tense. It’s like she said to herself, “Right, this is my place now.” She looks at home.’

It’s Theresa May’s house. It’s Theresa May’s country. When she returns from holiday, she needs to start to spell out what she intends to do with it.