Plus ca change! Europe does for yet another Tory Prime Minister

BY the standards of prime Ministerial resignations, Theresa May’s announcement to the 1922 Committee yesterday that she would step down before the next phase of the Brexit talks scarcely counts as a shock.

In a sense, it has been on the cards ever since Big Ben struck ten on the evening of June 8, 2017, when it became obvious that her snap election gamble had disastrously failed, and that she had lost her parliamentary majority.

So even though Mrs May’s premiership now seems likely to end before its third anniversary, perhaps the most remarkable thing about it is that it lasted so long.

and whatever else you think of her, surely nobody can doubt her extraordinary stamina, resilience and sense of duty.

Many of her supporters will be relieved that in the end, having survived an attempted Brexiteer coup at the end of 2018, she agreed to walk away gracefully. after all, it is far better to bow out with some semblance of dignity than to be dragged out kicking and screaming. as with the last four Tory premiers, it was Europe that did for her – the issue which, more than any other, has divided the Conservative party to devastating effect in recent decades.

and the greatest parallel, inevitably, is with our only other woman prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, another lone woman often surrounded by patronising men.

When Mrs Thatcher set her face against ever-closer union in the late 1980s, she alienated her old ally Sir Geoffrey Howe, a passionate Europhile. and when Howe walked out, he triggered a leadership challenge from the pro- European Michael Heseltine.

Like Mrs May, Mrs Thatcher won the first ballot – but not by enough to stop the contest going to a second round. and it was then that her own Cabinet turned on her, trooping one by one into number 10 to plunge in the knife.

at some fundamental level, the Conservative party never really recovered. The bitterness lingered

for years, poisoning the premiership of her successor, John Major, who saw his party dismembered by bickering over Europe in the mid-1990s.

David Cameron, too, fell victim to the virus of European schism. Barely a year after he had won an unexpected majority in the 2015 election, he saw his party torn apart in the referendum campaign and had no choice but to resign when the country voted to leave the EU.

No doubt future historians will judge that Mrs May made her fair share of mistakes.

But she is surely just the latest victim of our dysfunctional political system, which sees both our largest parties splintered from head to toe on the single most incendiary issue of the day.

She is the latest victim, too, of a political culture that revels in plots and conspiracies, and in which too many ministers spend their time stabbing each other in the back and planning their assault on the top job, instead of genuinely considering the interests of the country.

WHOEVER succeeds her would be well advised, therefore, to keep a close eye on his or her Cabinet colleagues, and to watch out for the knife in the dark.

But above all, our next Conservative Prime Minister should pray for a swift resolution to the Brexit impasse.

If it can be resolved, then I think the next Tory premier can be confident of beating Jeremy Corbyn in a general election.

But if the Brexit debate continues to fester, then we could well see yet another Conservative leader being brought down by Europe.