Theresa may

Put 10th June in your diary. Because that is when the contest to elect a new Tory leader, and therefore a new prime minister, will begin, I am told. Why am I confident of that? Well it is the last possible date for the contest that the shop stewards for Tory MPs, the executive for the 1922 committee, deem acceptable. And – perhaps more importantly – it is the date that the PM has signalled to her closest allies that she can tolerate. How so? Well she does not want the state visit of Donald Trump and the D-Day celebrations of the preceding week to be undermined by the unseemly spectacle of Tory MPs and ministers scrabbling and scrambling to replace her.

The Prime Minister’s speech yesterday, in which she announced a 'ten-point offer' to parliament for a 'new Brexit deal' has gone down like the proverbial cold cup of sick with many Conservative MPs. The rage isn’t just confined to the 28 Brexiteer hold-outs who voted against the deal on 29 March either – so far, another 40 MPs who previously voted for the deal have indicated they will not vote for the proposed Withdrawal Agreement Bill. Overall, with little sign of movement towards the deal from Labour, it seems the Prime Minister is going backwards.

Theresa May has this afternoon had one last roll of the dice in the Brexit saga. In a speech entitled 'New Brexit Deal', the Prime Minister threw the kitchen sink at passing her deal on a fourth vote. With May expected to step down if her deal is rejected again after recess, she made an appeal to MPs to get behind a Brexit deal.

Theresa May has one last hope for getting her Brexit deal through. As I say in The Sun this morning, she can bring the Withdrawal Agreement Bill to parliament and try and get MPs to vote for it. Not John Bercow, or anyone else, can stop her from using this as a fourth attempt to get her deal through. But if MPs defeat it again, then Mrs May will have nothing left. If the WAB was voted down, then a new Queen’s Speech would be required to bring it back—and Mrs May would struggle to pass one of those. This is why there’s such intense debate about when to bring this bill to the Commons. Number 10 is more gung-ho than the Brexit Department which worries about the consequences of bringing the bill and losing it.

After the sacking of Gavin Williamson, a former No. 10 insider said of Theresa May: ‘One of Theresa’s big faults is that she basically doesn’t trust any other elected politicians. She places her trust in advisers and officials, because they are loyal to her.’ The Roman emperor Claudius (r. 41-54 ad) too found it hard to know whom to trust. He turned to an adviser of the previous emperor. Claudius, nephew of the emperor Tiberius, was born in 10 bc but because of some disability (his mother Antonia called him a monster) he was never taken seriously by the imperial family. However, when the emperor Caligula was assassinated in 41 ad, Claudius was made emperor by the army. Since the senate strongly disapproved, Claudius could hardly trust them.

PMQs began with Janet Daby calling for a mass-cull of the working-class. The Labour MP relayed the experience of an industrious constituent who already has two jobs, on zero-hour contracts, and seeks a third. ‘Ban zero hours contracts!’ she declared in outrage. Obviously she’s fed up with people working in her constituency. Much easier if they all starve to death. And with her policies they will. Labour leader Jeremy Corybn had good news about the NHS which he’d failed to interpret correctly. Forty per cent of staff last year, he said, had suffered ‘work-related stress’. This means that 60 per cent of them hadn't. Not a twinge, not a whisper of anxiety during 12 long months of underfunded chaos.

When a political party is in trouble, we see infighting, leak inquiries, resignations, mass loss of council seats, dismissals and botched attempts to depose the leader. But when a party implodes, something different happens: it loses the ability to defend or explain itself. An imploding party can and will lose any argument, no matter how strong its track record. The Tories entered this terminal stage under John Major after the disastrous local elections of 1995, which were followed by their landslide defeat of 1997. With the party now having had its worst set of election since 1995, it looks very much like they might be entering it again.

Best mates on Brexit, deadly foes on everything else. The highly suspicious search for a Lab/Con Brexit accord was suspended today as the party leaders exchanged blows at PMQs. These covert ‘talks’ are clearly a blackmail effort contrived in Downing Street. By threatening her MPs with a Labour-backed Customs Union, Theresa May hopes to secure their support for her thrice-rejected withdrawal agreement. It might just work. The EU wasn’t mentioned at PMQs but the Labour leader found alternative sources of distress. ‘Things are getting worse,’ he crowed at the Prime Minister as he ran through a hit-parade of sob-stories: inequality, malnutrition, rising crime, falling police numbers and care-home failures.

How does Theresa May plan to spend the six-month Brexit extension? Nearly one month in and there is little sign of a Brexit breakthrough. The Labour/Tory talks are ongoing yet those inside the room are pessimistic they will lead to an imminent solution. It now seems as though there won't be much in the way of domestic legislation either. In a lobby briefing, a Downing Street spokesman has suggested that the next Queen’s speech is to be postponed: 'What we are focused on is the withdrawal agreement bill [WAB], because that is the legislation which is necessary in order to ratify our withdrawal from the EU. That is part of the current Queen’s speech cycle and we need to finish that work.

Next week, Theresa May will sit down with Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee. He will ask her for more clarity on her departure plans. As I say in The Sun this morning, the answer that Mrs May gives will go a long way to determining her future. On Wednesday, the executive of the 1922 Committee rejected a change to its rules which would allow another vote of confidence in Mrs May’s leadership. But this decision was taken narrowly, 9 to 7 with 2 abstentions, and the executive did decide to ask the Prime Minister for more detail on when she will go. If Mrs May simply carries on saying that she’ll leave if the withdrawal agreement passes, that will not be enough.