THE ‘SUBMARINE’ PM SURFACES

AS THERESA MAY’S motorcade swung through the White House gates on Friday morning, the low Washington winter sun briefly picked out her expression through the window of her official car: tense and lost in thought. Hours later, she boarded her private Prime Ministerial plane at Andrews Air Force base in triumph – exuding a new confidence after her double-act with Donald Trump catapulted her into the front rank of world leaders.

It is the most dramatic step change so far in Mrs May’s journey from vicar’s daughter to the global power broker and cover girl for US Vogue.

It is difficult to credit that the imposing figure standing in the Oval Office last week is the same woman I interviewed for a newspaper article a decade and a half ago.

Then the Tories’ education spokeswoman, Mrs May was hesitant and nervous when asked about even humdrum details of schools policy.

Even after David Cameron appointed her to the Cabinet after the 2010 Election, there was little sign she possessed the charisma for the top job.

Social events with the Home Secretary could be a trial. While Mrs May was always friendly and polite, she had an aversion to gossip – and jokes.

Long silences would be broken only by the sound of clashing cutlery.

For Cameron and his team, she was the ‘submarine’ who proved infuriatingly hard to engage with.

But last week’s US trip – starting with the Philadelphia speech in which she invoked the special relationship of Thatcher and Reagan and repudiated the interventionist wars of David Cameron and Tony Blair – has moved her up a gear. She even has the status symbol to go with it.

Mr Cameron’s resignation last summer means that she has inherited the new, specially equipped plane – originally dubbed ‘Cam Force One’ – which he commissioned to be placed at the personal disposal of the PM.

He had the chance to fly in the £10million Voyager only once, before he handed over the keys to Mrs May.

WHEN she l anded i n America on Thursday, the plane – now affectionately known as ‘Theresa Air’ – taxied up the runway and parked next to the US President’s Air Force One, besides which it looked a symbolically scaleddown version but still impressive.

Mrs May used her first-class cabin at the front of the plane to work on the Philadelphia speech, discussing key lines with her senior team, Fiona Hill and Christopher Timothy, as RAF officers served their drinks.

She was happy to break off to walk down to the back of the plane to talk to the Press, joking with us – unscripted – that she expected to click with the controversial and exuberant new President because ‘opposites attract’.

Central to Mrs May’s success is keeping the same tight-knit team of loyalists around her. Joint chiefs of staff Ms Hill and Mr Timothy have guarded her fiercely since her early days at the Home Office.

It is a marked turnaround from the disarray which followed Mr Trump’s election victory in November, when Downing Street and the Foreign Office, which had planned for a Hillary Clinton victory, seemed hopelessly wrong-footed.

When Ukip’s Nigel Farage exploited the disarray, swooping in to meet the President-Elect at Trump Tower, Mrs May’s team were stung into action.

MS HILL and Mr Timothy, who had been disparaging and dismissive about Trump during his campaign, travelled to Washington before Christmas to pave the way for the historic summit. But as the furore over Mr Trump’s crackdown on Muslim refugees yesterday erupted, Mrs May will know there could be a price – as well as a reward – for reaching out so rapidly and so warmly to the new President.

And even friendly Tories seem to think that flattering comparisons of the new Trump/May relationship to the famous Ronald Reagan /Margaret Thatcher 1980s double-act are overdone.

Writing last week, Tory MP Kwasi Kwarteng said Reagan and Thatcher were ‘united by a common purpose. They were both unashamedly ideological. They both promoted free trade and capitalism, and stood belligerently against communism and the power of the Soviet Union’.

In contrast, he described President Trump and Mrs May as leaders who ‘probably feel instinctively that each relies on the success of the other. They are like shipwreck survivors on a raft, relying on each other while they navigate turbulent waters’.

But as May’s plane lifted off from Andrews Air Base, a political lifeboat seemed the last thing on her mind.

While still some way short of matching the insouciant command of Mr Cameron, she already looks more at ease than Gordon Brown – who would fly into rages with his advisers over the tone of newspaper coverage.

As the Prime Minister returned to London last night, there were no rages: just quiet satisfaction.

The submarine has surfaced.