Pitiful PM who glued herself to Downing Street

There’s a new squatter in No10. A raging, tortured Gordon Brown clung to his mahogany desk for several excruciating days in 2010 after delivering Labour’s worst election result in decades. Today, a fragile, finished Theresa May has shoved a sofa against the door to stop senior politicians who want her to step down from getting in.

As the Prime Minister retreated in desperation last night, Andrea Leadsom was the first Cabinet minister to resign, urging her to “make the right decisions in the interests of the country”.

Regrettably, the nation cannot count on this. Mrs May’s lack of dignity is extraordinary to behold. On one level, her refusal to go is utterly incomprehensible. The professionally cautious Cabinet has finally moved in on her. The 1922 Committee may well now change its rules in order to allow for another confidence vote. Labour has thrown her tragicomically overgenerous deal back in her face.

But if “power” morally corrupts, “legacy” mentally corrodes. And the woman who has aspired after this job since she was a girl is maddened by the scale of her failures. Instead of a sunlit legacy as the leader who delivered Brexit, the PM’S impact is a black abyss of not-yet-known horrors, which could range from the destruction of the Tory party to the biggest democratic betrayal in modern history.

The irony is that the more Mrs May stubbornly fights for survival, the worse her record becomes. She will now not only be known as the “stubborn woman” defined by ripped-up red lines and ambitionless drudgery, she will go down as the pitiful leader who glued herself to No10. One can only hope that today the PM comes to terms with the harsh fact that all she can do now is resign.