How Philip took personal charge of OPERATION SAVE THERESA
THE Prime Minister’s husband Philip May took a leading role in the campaign to save his wife’s premiership, The Mail on Sunday has learned.
With fear of a defeat so great inside Downing Street last week that Mrs May drafted a resignation statement, Mr May was a central figure at crisis meetings held by worried aides.
On Tuesday evening, Westminster lit up with the rumours that backbench steward Sir Graham Brady was preparing to announce that the crucial 48-letter threshold for a confidence vote in the Prime Minister’s leadership had been reached.
However, Mrs May was in the air after a whistlestop tour of the Netherlands, Germany and Brussels, leaving her financier partner of 38 years to take charge of initial ‘wargaming’ meetings held in her No 10 study.
Downing Street officials joke that the Chancellor Philip Hammond is ‘ only the second most powerful Philip in government’ but, as Mrs May’s grip on power slips, she has come to rely on the ‘ first husband’ to an unprecedented degree.
Widely seen as her trusted confidant and ‘rock’, it is understood
His ‘go fast’ plan paid off and she won the vote
that Mr May, 61, has taken on an unparalleled role as an unofficial adviser and strategist to the PM.
At Tuesday’s crunch planning session, Mr May announced that his wife should address the backbench 1922 Committee of Tory MPs the following afternoon in a rapid response to the attempt to oust her from Downing Street.
He argued it was best to ‘go fast’ with the vote rather than let the leadership question stew over a number of days, overshadowing the PM’s Brussels summit on Thursday and allowing her opponents more time to organise.
He was unanimously backed by her official advisers in a half-hour meeting held before Mrs May and her chief of staff Gavin Barwell – who would normally chair such meetings – arrived from RAF Northolt at 10pm that evening.
The following lunchtime, Mr May was spotted in a rare outing to Parliament to watch his wife give what could have been her last Prime Minister’s Questions session.
In an even rarer public utterance, he told reporters gathered in the lobby of the House of Commons that he was ‘very confident’ his wife would win the crunch vote that evening.
It was the first time that Mr May had spoken publicly about her since her doomed 2017 General Election campaign, when he said he was ‘trying to give Theresa as much support as I can’.
‘It’s obviously a very tough job, there are a lot of tough decisions, a lot of things you really have to work hard at as PM,’ he said then.
As Wednesday wore on, Downing Street began to increasingly resemble a florist as wellwishers and loyal party members inundated the PM with bouquets of flowers and messages of support.
And Mr May’s ‘go fast’ plan paid off, with Mrs May winning by 200 votes to 117 – the size of the rebell i on worrying but not fatal, although the psychological barrier of 200 was only hit by reinstating disgraced MP Andrew Griffiths, suspended from the party over a lurid sexting scandal.
With the result known in Downing Street before it was made public at 9pm, Mrs May’s team abandoned a drafted statement calling time on her Government, written in case it had gone the other way. Exhausted and relieved staff gathered outside the Cabinet room with the PM’s favourite ‘full bodied’ red wine and ready-salted crisps and – in a sign of the key role he had played – they cheered both Mr and Mrs May as she headed out to address the nation on the steps of Downing Street.
As she left, Mrs May turned back to her husband, quipping ‘save me some of those crisps’. She returned to more cheers and claps, as tributes and text messages began to pour in from world leaders.
However the pair were in bed by 10.30 after two gruelling days and with the prospect of a Brussels summit the following morning.
And Mrs May is not out of the danger zone yet, with Downing Street on red alert for a bid by Labour to try to push for a formal vote of no confidence in her Government in the final days of year.
Just a handful of Brexiteer hardliners abstaining would see her administration collapse, meaning Tory MPs will be unable to sneak home for Christmas early.
IT HAD all been planned with military precision. The plotters leaving the ‘KillZone’ – the nickname for the campaign headquarters that had been established i n Iain Duncan Smith’s plush office on Parliament’s Upper Committee corridor – were to depart at two-minute intervals to avoid attracting suspicion.
But as Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab, Jacob Rees- Mogg, Owen Patterson, Priti Patel and Steve Baker snuck out, they ran straight into a group of Tory MPs who were congregating outside a nearby meeting room. Also present was David Canzini, an associate of the PR firm run by one Lynton Crosby, the ‘Aussie-Machiavelli’ who masterminded Bojo’s two successful mayoral bids and David Cameron’s 2015 General Election triumph.
‘ Someone shouted to Canzini, “Whose campaign are you running now?” But he just looked sheepish and scuttled off,’ an MP told me.
Meticulously prepared and shambolically executed. That’s how historians will record the 2018 Christmas Coup. ‘ The whole thing’s been a catastrophe,’ one Minister lamented. ‘May’s been mortally wounded but is going to stagger on like she always does. There’s no way of removing her for another year. And we’re no closer to finding any solution on how to move forward with her deal.’
The debacle that attended their initial attempt to secure the 48 names to trigger a leadership challenge should have served as a warning. But the ERG assassins have become drunk on their own failure. As one No 10 official explained, ‘it’s not about Brexit for them any more. It’s become personal. They just want to get her out regardless’.
Now, thanks to efforts that would make the Keystone Cops l ook models of efficiency, they can’t. The Sword of Damocles that had been dangling over the PM, and which even Cabinet loyalists conceded might have to be wielded if she could not find a way of breaking the Chequers impasse, is now protruding firmly from Jacob Rees-Mogg’s own foot.
‘They’re out of their depth,’ one furious Brexiteer raged. ‘ They think they’re still kids playing with their plastic army men.’
Theresa May’s Downing Street operation has had its critics but they saw the ERG coming a mile off, and had made preparations. Two weeks ago the Tory whips office and key May advisers began detailed ‘wargaming’ for the confidence vote. A spreadsheet was collated, dividing every Tory MP into three groups – red for likely opponents, amber for waiverers and green for loyalists. Ministers, whips and No 10 aides were tasked with contacting MPs with whom they had worked.
The early warning No 10 required to put their counter- strike into motion came – inevitably – from their opponents. As Graham Brady began the process of confirming the receipt of letters with their signatories, ERG members started boasting to colleagues that May was finished. Another blunder was the decision to submit the final letters on a Tuesday, giving May’s team the option of going for a rapid contest.
As the PM flew back from Brussels, her main advisers were huddled with her husband Philip to plan their strategy. Unusually for a No 10 spouse, Mr May played a significant role in masterminding her response, taking the lead in suggesting she address the 1922 Committee, and urging a vote at the earliest opportunity. ‘We had a show of hands on whether to have a Wednesday vote, and it was unanimous,’ said someone who attended.
As the Prime Minister began the process of sitting down with MPs to fight for her political life, it became obvious a big concern was whether she would lead her party into the next Election. ‘One thing she doesn’t want is the perception that she’s “done a Cameron” and walked off leaving the country in the lurch,’ said a Minister. ‘But as Wednesday morning wore on it became clear the Election issue was a dealbreaker. So that’s when she decided to make the statement she wouldn’t go on and on.’
It was that pledge, coupled with the incompetence of her adversaries, that saved her. Once the result was confirmed, she walked out of No 10 to deliver a victory statement, asking staff ‘save some crisps for me’.
MANY view that victory as a Pyrrhic one. The revelation 117 members of her parliamentary party have no confidence in her leadership has seriously damaged it. But it has seriously damaged the hard-core Brexiteers, too.
The PM’s argument has been that, if her deal is rejected, there are only two alternatives – No Deal or No Brexit. In response, former Ministers such as Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab have attempted to argue there is a third option – ditch her, put a ‘proper Brexiteer’ in charge and watch the brittle Eurocrats capitulate to some John Bull-style diplomacy.
The events of last week have shown that argument is for the birds. There is now no mechanism for forcing the Prime Minister’s departure. The EU has made it clear that even if there was, they would not entertain the idea of renegotiating the deal. And even if they were minded to renegotiate, the last people in Europe they would hand meaningful concessions too are the Tory Eurosceptics.
In fact, the ERG’s blundering has narrowed the options even further. As one moderate Tory MP told me, ‘now their only move is to go for No Deal. But if they defeat her in the meaningful vote and push for that, they’re facing a second referendum on a cross-party basis. And they won’t like that one bit’.
A No 10 source reaffirmed Mrs May’s implacable opposition to a second referendum. But they conceded that, if her deal is defeated, the Commons would view such a referendum as ‘a viable option’.
Some of the more pragmatic rebels are still hoping and working for other solutions. One group is urging Cabinet intervention. Others are calling for Ministers to ‘go fullthrottle with the No Deal preparations. We need to throw money hand over fist to make No Deal work’.
But less pragmatic solutions are also being contemplated. Aware of the opposition to No Deal that exists in parliament, some Brexiteers have been discussing the use of the Civil Contingencies Act to bulldoze a path past the Commons.
This is where we are thanks to this week’s efforts from Jacob Rees-Mogg’s child-soldiers. With a wounded PM being openly mocked and taunted by Europe’s loungelizard Jean-Claude Juncker. With a second referendum threatening the fracture of the Conservative Party and the country. And with British MPs contemplating the use of wartime plenipotentiary powers to force a No Deal Brexit on to the British people.
Theresa May might have been the target. But now the entire country is trapped in the ERG’s Kill-Zone.