Brexiteer no-confidence vote could help Mrs May

THERE IS general wonder that Theresa May is still standing. After an exhausting week of leadership challenges, Cabinet resignations, marathon parliamentary sessions, press conferences and radio phone-ins, there is wide admiration at her resilience. The top jobs in British politics require stamina, and she has proved that she has got it.

You also need luck. Michael Gove’s decision to stay in his job as Environment Secretary this morning is an unexpected bonus. This, after all, is the politician who Mrs May openly disdained when she was Home Secretary — and fired the moment she walked into Downing Street. It fits a curious pattern. For she also demoted Matt Hancock, humiliated Jeremy Hunt and let her toxic advisers go around telling everyone that Sajid Javid and Philip Hammond would soon be replaced. It is those she treated badly who now prop her up — and those she promoted, such as David Davis and Boris Johnson, who are trying to bring her down. The irony that he is now trying to save this Prime Minister’s skin is not lost on Mr Gove. However, resigning would, he thinks, be a “destructive not a constructive act”. As one of the architects of Brexit, he feels he has an obligation to “keep the show on the road”.

The question is: is it too late for that? For leaders need more than stamina and a bit of luck. They also require imagination. When faced with a seemingly intractable situation, the true leader is one who finds the surprising way out. If Mrs May is to survive, then she needs to show her party — and the country — a level of imagination that we have so far not seen from her.

For the simple arithmetic situation remains this: she does not have the votes in the House of Commons to pass her Brexit deal. It is not even close. Ignoring this fact, repeating ad nauseam the same stilted phrases about the national interest, treats people like fools.

Mrs May needs to show her party she has a plan. What could it be? Holding a free vote, as Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt demands, is not the answer. Ms Mordaunt has a reputation for bringing a fresh, different approach to politics. So she knows that calling for a free vote is a classic political copout. How can you go on serving in a government and vote against the one thing the Government is trying to do? It’s a nonsense. Although she was painfully reluctant to do so in her radio interview, Mrs May was right to rule out the free vote this morning.

Nor can she rely on Labour votes to pass her Brexit deal. One thing that has not materialised in the past few days — surprise, surprise — has been the mythical bloc of moderate opposition MPs who are ready to ride to the rescue of a beleaguered Tory administration.

No, what Mrs May needs to do is somehow reassemble the parliamentary majority that the Conservatives enjoy with the DUP. The Northern Irish unionists are up in arms, but all experience suggests that they can be bought off — literally.

That leaves Jacob Rees-Mogg and his merry men; for as the throwback TV images of yesterday remind us, they are predominantly male — and pale. These hard Brexiteers cannot be so easily bought. They show a consistent unwillingness to make the compromises required to deliver the damaging project they have foisted on the nation. But, in their attempt to secure a motion of no-confidence against the Prime Minister, they may have unwittingly provided Mrs May with a lifeline. Winning the vote by a simple majority would not be enough for the Prime Minister, whatever the rules say. It would spell the end. But were she to win the confidence vote well, she would have secured the one thing she has lacked ever since her disastrous election a year ago: a mandate for her Brexit deal. She could turn around to rebel Tory MPs and say: you made your argument; you lost; now get behind me. It might just work.

The alternative is a new leader with their own new mandate. Either way, the Tory leadership contest is the way through the parliamentary deadlock. Does Mrs May have the imagination to see that?