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Matthew Parris (as astute as ever) writing in the Times.
A wave of sympathy for Theresa May is sweeping the Britain outside Westminster. It’s most indicative that Michael Gove has noticed this. Mr Gove is an observant politician. He is also a courteous person. In politics, however, courtesy and self-interest coincide more often than is generally supposed. That staying loyal to the present incumbent is Mr Gove’s shrewdest route to Downing Street doesn’t mean he’s being disingenuous when he explains he doesn’t want to make trouble. I’m sure he doesn’t.
Others will do that. Others have. And by sticking by her, Mr Gove will help repair the reputation for backstabbing that he gained among some when he abandoned Boris Johnson at the last Tory leadership election. The Conservative Party beyond Westminster will not like to see Mrs May ousted by colleagues. Mr Gove is wise to have nothing to do with it.
If she falls, though, there should be little doubt he will be a front-runner in the race to replace her. So his challenge, which is not impossible, is to let colleagues know that he’d be available if some accident were to befall her, while being clear he isn’t going to cause it. Rather like Count Dracula, Jacob Rees-Mogg’s European Research Group (ERG) of hardline Brexiteer MPs tend to flee the dawn; strong in the shadows, flimsier when exposed to sunlight. But whether or not four dozen MPs — the number needed to trigger a vote of no confidence in the prime minister — want to join her assassins this weekend, there are many score more who would like to see her gone soon. The reason Mr Gove’s availability could matter is that Mrs May’s only remaining strength is the absence of others on the rational centre-right with the heft to pull things together in what is fast becoming a national emergency. Boris Johnson suffers from the disadvantage that his colleagues know him. Dominic Raab and David Davis will struggle to explain how they could get a better deal than they didn’t when they were Brexit secretary. There exist less famous or more junior MPs with leadership potential, but in the frightened mood my guess is that a premium will be placed upon that almost indefinable quality: seniority and command. It’s a silly word, “weight”, in politics; but at times like this, “weight” is the only word.
It is not the likelihood that May would lose a vote of confidence, but it is a stronger possibility than people think. We who observe with grudging admiration her resilience and sheer bloody-mindedness shouldn’t overlook how much irritation she now inspires in the parliamentary party. They are seriously fed up with her and her alternation between banality and silence. Her glum reception by the government benches when she made her statement on Thursday was partly personal. No hat, no rabbit, and a humbling capitulation to demands from Brussels that have hardly altered in years. As Viscount Melbourne once spluttered: “What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.” This is an atmosphere in which the craziness of jettisoning a leader at the moment when the British government’s attempt to leave the EU seems to be falling apart can feel like sanity. Theresa May isn’t any good as prime minister, and that now blocks from colleagues’ minds the wider picture.
But the wider picture is that it would make little difference if she were any good. While the cabinet wagon lurches off the road in the night, wheels spinning, horses whinnying and tiny figures hurled like stick-men this way and that, all is noise and confusion. But up in the firmament the moon and the stars remain still, fixed, frozen, silent. The political verities have not changed. The predicament in which the electorate landed the British government after the European referendum has not changed. The response of our European partners to Britain’s demands has not changed. The awful truth that we are the petitioners, not the court, has not changed. The fundamental weakness of our hand has not changed. Nothing has changed.
The weeks ahead may see Mrs May beaten. There may be excitement, anxiety, even hope, and the air will be full of what we call news. Finally someone in whom we repose more trust may enter Downing Street and there may be a surge of relief. But after his or her moment at the lectern outside the black front door, the new leader will enter to find on the incoming prime minister’s desk the same conundrum staring up.
