A lonely, dignified woman and the insolence of men who can’t count

AS Harold Wilson darkly observed, a week is a long time in politics. He might have added that, in politics, timing itself is everything. Ambitions have been dashed, careers derailed, reputations lost and governments brought down when statesmen have misjudged it.

Scarcely a week ago, the tormented Theresa May endured another rash of resignations from her strong and stable Government.

Defending her sorely won Brexit deal in the Commons, it was nearly an hour before any MP spoke in her support. At one point on Friday, most commentators thought she was finished. In a YouGov opinion poll, only 33 per cent thought she should remain Prime Minister – with 47 per cent insisting she should go.

But we had not reckoned with the optics of a lonely, dignified woman weathering hours of insolence, interrogation and abuse – largely from men – or the witlessness of her immediate, internal opponents. The attempted coup by backbench Brexiteers, chaps who seem unable even to count, serves only as a reminder why the swivel-eyed Right of the Conservative Party has never been allowed to lead it and that some MPs are, in fact, extremely silly.

They have not brought down the Prime Minister. They have not even weakened her. The wider nation rallied behind her. The latest poll suggests 46 per cent of us wish her to remain in office and only 30 per cent demand her removal – and 73 per cent of Tory voters and even most who voted Leave want her to hold on.

IN truth, the proper time to remove Mrs May was within hours of her general election car crash last year. There is no precedent for a Prime Minister surviving in office after calling a wholly unnecessary election and throwing away an overall majority.

But David Davis, whose star then waxed high and could have had the premiership for the asking, sat with the tearful Mrs May for an age and insisted she should stay. Other potential assasSalmond sins hesitated to strike. Now she, for the moment, seems principled and indomitable; doing her best, fixing beans and toast for her man and putting on a washing in brief relief from Brexit – and they, by contrast, gravely diminished.

It was not the first time Davis had blundered. After the 2005 election he seemed set for the Tory leadership. But he hesitated, even as the smooth David Cameron – of whom hardly anyone had then ever heard – went on manoeuvres.

Fortune rarely smiles more than once. As the scale of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement disaster grew apparent, and we fell helplessly into war, the obvious alternative was Anthony Eden, who had quit as Foreign Secretary in disgust at our pandering to dictators.

But he built up no faction, made no allies, showed no clarity of purpose and ambition – and the premiership finally fell to Churchill, who thereafter always had doubts as to Eden’s inner steel, in time fully vindicated by the Suez debacle.

Boris Johnson had power at his feet after the 2016 referendum and Cameron’s resignation – and blew it by disappearing for two days, to a convivial barbecue and a flippant cricket match, projecting the air of gigglesome Amateurville as the nation ached for leadership.

A telling contrast is how Alex played it after the 2007 Holyrood election. Though the Nationalists had only one more MSP than Labour, Jack McConnell gave a shifty interview on a Glasgow street and with the mien of a loser.

Salmond shortly descended – by helicopter – in the grounds of a grand Edinburgh hotel, emerged as if to the sound of trumpets and, behind a quasi-presidential lectern, declaimed how he would order this and enact that. He sounded exactly like a First Minister – and so duly became one.

It’s all about timing. In autumn 1978, the polls looked good for the Labour Government. There was little industrial unrest, living standards were rising and, in Scotland, the Nationalist tide had turned as Labour won a succession of by-elections. A general election was expected. But at the crucial moment, James Callaghan was unsettled by an aggressive Tory poster – Labour Isn’t Working – highlighting an increase in unemployment.

Having allowed election speculation to build, he killed it off with an ill-judged and flippant speech at the TUC Conference. Weeks later, Callaghan’s incomes policy collapsed, the unions turned on him, we all endured the Winter of Discontent and the Government fell.

Weeks later, Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister.

Three decades later, a nearidentical error was made by Gordon Brown, whose authority never recovered after likewise talking up the chances of a snap election and then, bluntly, bottling it. It was never glad, confident morning again.

NICOLA Sturgeon last year grievously damaged herself and her party by audaciously bidding to hold a second independence referendum – having not three years earlier yipped that the first one was a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity.

We cannot, of course, blame Sturgeon for Theresa May calling a general election after repeatedly saying she would not, but it happened at the worst possible moment for the Nationalists, as an exasperated public united instinctively behind the likeliest pro-Union challenger in many constituencies – including many habitual but pro-Brexit SNP voters weary of being insulted daily by their own leader.

The SNP lost more than 20 seats, with the casualties including Salmond himself. Hubris, then nemesis – but, really, all about timing.

The Scottish Tories may have likewise miscalculated. Only last month, Ruth Davidson and David Mundell signed an audacious open letter on Brexit to Theresa May, insisting neither ‘could support any deal that creates a border of any kind in the Irish Sea… or leads to Northern Ireland having a different relationship with the EU than the rest of the UK beyond what currently exists.’

Exactly such a deal has been reached by an undaunted Prime Minister. We are still waiting for Davidson and Mundell to resign and, one suspects, we will be waiting a long time – though Mundell’s ugly abuse of the honourable Dominic Raab last Friday was a low moment.

There is a silly mantra one often hears in modern politics: ‘He who wields the dagger never wears the crown.’ Silly because it is not true.

Margaret Thatcher daggered Edward Heath, went on to command the Tories for 15 years and has gone down in history as an epochal Prime Minister, outlasting three Labour leaders and defeating such spectres as General Galtieri and Arthur Scargill.

The miners’ leader was determined to bring down her government by a strike that, within weeks, would have us all shivering in dark, unlit and powerless homes – and which he called in the spring.