Mrs May must say she will stand down as leader

It is a golden rule never to set the clock ticking on your exit, but the battered PM needs to take a gamble

‘When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters,” John F Kennedy once said. “One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.” This typically powerful quote from JKF was also, unfortunately, linguistically inaccurate according to the experts. Nevertheless, as she surveys the wreckage of last week’s slow-moving car crash, the Prime Minister would do well to keep it front of mind. Firstly, because opportunity can indeed come from crisis, but also to take comfort that even the Kennedy White House was home to Captain Cock-up from time to time.

With Grant Shapps’s schoolboy-standard coup strangled at birth by her impressive chief whip Gavin Williamson, Theresa May has been gifted a final shot at reinvention. Will she now show the courage to grab it?

To do so the Prime Minister must make clear that she will not lead the party into the next General Election. It may seem like a given but, until now, whenever asked about her future, she has robotically insisted she’s in it for the long haul. Although putting a precise date on her departure would be a mistake, Mrs May must announce that she’ll stand aside before Britain next goes to the polls.

Many in Westminster would argue that to start the clock ticking on your own exit breaks a golden rule of politics and presents your opposition with a scab to continually pick at. Normally I would agree, but Mrs May’s leadership is so battered, the time has come to take some calculated risks. More importantly, it would reposition her positively with the country and her party.

In her early Downing Street days, the Prime Minister resonated as a politician genuinely working in the national interest. She cleverly placed herself outside the Westminster system, as someone not driven entirely by self-interest – a veteran politician called to office by circumstance to get an historic job done. That ended during this year’s election campaign, when Mrs May inexplicably did everything possible to show she was, in fact, “just like the rest of them”. A fresh, dramatic announcement to show that it’s not all about her, but about the country, might just enable a reconnection with the electorate.

This would reassure the Conservative Party that she’s serious about the need for real and long-term renewal, too. It must be coupled with a swift, meaningful reshuffle to bring new energy to the Cabinet, drawing on talent from more recent intakes.

The easiest decision must be to sack the Foreign Secretary, whose disloyal performance in the run-up to conference was as unforgivable as it was predictable. If he chooses to stay put, and stamp his feet, so be it. It will only serve to confirm that he puts his career ahead of country. A reshuffle will allow those with leadership ambitions to be tested and to see if they attract the necessary talent to support them: leadership campaigns are a team sport.

But this strategy will only stand a chance of success if Mrs May is able to unblock the stasis inside her government. The real problem with conference was not the events of Wednesday, farcical though they were, but the lack of energy and fresh ideas throughout the week.

Conference offers the one chance in the political year to maximise your free hit of “straight” coverage by telling voters who you are, what you stand for and what, precisely, you plan to deliver for them. Only Ruth Davidson seemed to understand this, with a strong and compelling speech. Another reason why she is undeniably the front-runner for the leadership.

In the main we got a bad tempered, monochrome reaction to Labour’s seaside love-in. It was a neuralgic conference, focused only on the opposition and the here and now. Next to no attempt was made by Mrs May’s team to explain why only the Tories can deliver a better, more rewarding, more secure and more exciting future for Britain.

The Prime Minister has one more chance. She must remember JFK’S mishap, but might also inspire her new team with another, more accurate, Kennedy quote: “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.”