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 No10 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
His ‘go fast’ plan paid off and she won the vote
trusted confidant and ‘rock’, it is understood 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 rebellion 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.