Our beleaguered PM has staying power after all
Mrs May’s vow to fight on will not be popular among some in a party with a record of ousting leaders
Four days after the general election, a contrite Theresa May was facing the toughest party meeting of her career as she pleaded with Conservative MPS for a second chance.
Having lost her Commons majority – ending the careers of some of the party’s most popular MPS after a terrible election campaign – Mrs May knew she had to strike a deal with backbenchers to avoid an immediate coup. “I will serve you as long as you want me,” she told them, promising to get the party out of the “mess” she had created. Senior Tories left that meeting of the 1922 Committee believing Mrs May had reached an understanding with the parliamentary party that she would be allowed to keep her job until the Brexit process was complete in 2019, and then bow out.
Boris Johnson, seen as the most likely man to oust her, appeared content, saying he would not consider a leadership challenge while Brexit negotiations were going on.
And that, it seemed, was that. Having survived the summer recess without a sniff of a plot against her, no one was talking about the leadership question any more.
Then, completely out of the blue, Mrs May threw off her cloak of humility and announced to the world that she has every intention of fighting the next general election. It was her most unexpected pronouncement since calling the snap election in April, and it may turn out to be just as risky.
Critics, and potential rivals, who had agreed to give Mrs May a two-year stay of execution for the good of the party may now re-emerge from the shadows and implement plans for an early coup if they feel she has gone back on a gentlewoman’s agreement with them.
The Conservative Party conference in Manchester in a month’s time will now be dominated by questions of whether the party would ever countenance Mrs May fighting another election, having managed to turn off so many voters last time out.
Why, then, did Mrs May, who has spent the summer buttering up scores of backbench MPS with invitations to Chequers, decide to rock the boat just when she had sailed it into calmer waters? One possibility is that she has sensed weakness in her rivals, and feels strong enough to give them a “back me or sack me” ultimatum.
Boris Johnson, largely silent over the summer, looks increasingly isolated after the rest of the Cabinet finally called a truce over the Government’s plans for Brexit.
David Davis, who will be 70 next year, does not have time on his side, and Philip Hammond, who dominated the airwaves while Mrs May was on her summer break, has been given a sharp reminder that there is only one person in charge.
That message will also have gone out to Jeremy Corbyn, who spent his summer touring the country trying to convince voters that his time as prime minister is close at hand. In breaking cover about what she now says are her true plans, Mrs May has at least alleviated the problem of being a lame duck Prime Minister. By announcing an intention to serve for at least another five years, she has immediately boosted her authority at home and abroad. Anyone who thought they could ignore her because she was on borrowed time now has to think again.
She will need that authority during the ongoing Brexit negotiations, and during the coming Brexit debates in Parliament, which reconvenes next Tuesday.
Insiders insist Mrs May had not discussed any grand strategy for shifting the debate about her future, and was simply answering a question honestly. “She isn’t someone who
‘Anyone who thought they could ignore her because she was on borrowed time now has to think again’
strategises on how to answer questions,” said one. Another source suggested it was difficult for Mrs May to say anything else in answer to questions about her future – but she proved perfectly capable of dodging them in an interview with The Sun in July, when she repeated her mantra that: “I will serve as long as they want me to serve.”
Intriguingly, one Whitehall source told The Telegraph that Mrs May has never discussed the idea of stepping down in 2019, and has become annoyed by the fact that it has become commonly accepted wisdom that she will do so.
That raises the possibility that she has allowed her rivals to wrongly believe that she is going in two years’ time in order to quell their restiveness.
She was clearly riled by a Sunday newspaper article that suggested she has already agreed a date in August 2019 when she will resign, telling journalists on the flight to Japan: “That story has no basis whatsoever, I have absolutely no idea where it came from.” She was unusually animated, and when she was first asked whether
she ruled out fighting the next general election, she replied: “Of course not.”
The answer was so unexpected from a Prime Minister who rarely gives such direct answers that journalists had to check with each other that they had heard her correctly in the noisy cabin of the RAF aircraft.
They also assumed she would row back from her answer when TV crews from the BBC, Sky and ITN took turns to interview her on camera shortly after landing in Osaka. However, she went even further, saying bluntly that yes, she would fight the next election, adding: “I’m not a quitter.”
Mrs May’s true intentions, of course, are difficult to read: for months she dogmatically stuck to a line that an early election would not be in the country’s interests, only to call one when she thought she could not lose.
It remains entirely possible that Mrs May does intend to step down early, but has created a smokescreen to keep her rivals guessing. But Tory leaders rarely get to leave at a time of their own choosing – as even Margaret Thatcher discovered in the end.