Even the ‘stupid party’ must see there is still time to change leader

Theresa May has undoubtedly earned more than a footnote in the history books. She might have been forgotten as an inconsequential holder of high office, herself a sort of political “backstop”, plagued by bad luck, inadequately but decently attempting to process a policy of Brexit which she neither liked nor understood. If the Parliamentary Conservative Party had put her out of her misery last December by voting no confidence in her, she might have departed while enjoying some sympathy, at least from the politically uninformed.

But the Tories proved she was wrong when she termed them, back in 2002, the “nasty party”, and they confirmed that John Stuart Mill was right when he called them, half a century earlier, the “stupid party”. They stupidly kept her. Today’s roller-coaster catastrophe is the result.

No British Prime Minister has done as far-reaching harm as Theresa May. In the current frenzied and uncertain state of politics, the extent of that damage is obscured by the rush of events. As in the middle of a revolution or a war – and Britain’s current circumstances have parallels with both – there is a constant sense of things falling apart, but little perception of the final toll of damage. The broad lines, though, are already clear.

Mrs May’s Government has seriously undermined the British constitution. It was never going to be easy to reconcile the outcome of a referendum with the primacy of Parliament, particularly in the case of the 2016 result when the outcome was opposed by most politicians. The doctrine of the electoral mandate provided the means for that.

All current Conservative MPS were elected on a promise to give effect to the referendum result. This, however, the House of Commons, with initially covert and now overt Cabinet support, has betrayed. The Remainers dared not do so openly. They did it by seeking to rule out the possibility of no deal. Only a fool enters into a negotiation giving a public promise that he will accept whatever terms are finally offered. But then the Cabinet Remainers, perhaps including the Remainer Prime Minister, were never serious. These tactics opened the way for limited delay, then unlimited delay, then for negating Brexit altogether. Parliament has turned against the people in a clash of sovereignties. Mrs May encouraged that.

Theresa May is content, for whatever reason, to cling on to an office that every day is drained, through her own inadequacy, of power and authority. She perches uncertainly above an exploding insurrection.

Tory leaders have been forced out before, and if the Cabinet wants – and Cabinet ministers can be made to want – she, too, can swiftly be freed to write her memoirs. There is still time to shorten the last chapter.