Isabel Hardman

This time a year ago, Westminster was trying to work out what Mayism was. Perhaps, we wondered, it was a way of getting things done: serious government by committee rather than the ‘chaterama’ politics espoused by David Cameron. Or at least a rather Brownite commitment to showing how different Theresa May was to her predecessor by focusing on policies such as grammar schools and so on. Now, of course, it’s tempting to joke that Mayism was as doomed as the Mayans, but as Katy wrote recently, one good thing we have learned about the Prime Minister’s modus operandi is that she doesn’t quit when things are utterly miserable in the way that other senior politicians have in recent years.

It was only a year ago that ‘Brexit means Brexit, and we’re going to make a success of it’ seemed like a reasonably fresh phrase which could actually mean something. Now, we don’t hear so much about making a success of the thing as we do about getting through it in one piece, hopefully with Theresa May’s Cabinet agreeing on a few things along the way too. The Cabinet is slowly starting to realise that a little pragmatism on both sides wouldn’t hurt as the government burrows into the detailed negotiations with the European Union. A bit of agreement on transitional periods, if not immigration, is handy, but this is just the Cabinet we’re talking about, not other EU countries.

What’s the most significant thing that Liam Fox has said today, as he begins talks with the US on a post-Brexit trade deal? Is it that he thinks the British media has an ‘obsession’ with chlorine-washed chicken (Ross takes a non-obsessive look at this here) or that he has admitted that it might be ‘optimistic’ to expect a trade deal between the UK and the EU by March 2019? It is true that the International Trade Secretary has often been the most optimistic about how hard Brexit will be (unkind people might suggest that this is because he hasn’t actually had to do much of the nitty gritty stuff since taking the job a year ago), so his comments today at the American Enterprise Institute do represent a rather more pragmatic tone.

The Labour party has a troubling recess ahead of it. Many of its members just won’t know what to do with themselves. This is because for the first time in two years, there is no leadership contest. Those who had eschewed beach holidays in favour of spending their summer recess in windowless rooms listening to contenders for the top job fight over who would really, really nationalise the railways now have nothing to do. Even before Labour lost the election unexpectedly well, few anticipated an immediate challenge to Jeremy Corbyn.

So Vince Cable is now the new Lib Dem leader, after no-else opposed the 74-year-old Twickenham MP for the party's top job. Of course, in the Lib Dems the 'top job' is a little less powerful than in other parties, thanks to a spider's web of structures that mean the leader can't always do what he (or maybe one day she) wants. But Cable clearly knows what he does want to do, which is to make up for the party's miserable election campaign in which Tim Farron spent far too much time having to talk about gay sex, and the rest of his party spent far too much time trying to defend him.

Given how miserable things are for Theresa May at the moment, with her Cabinet behaving like children, her backbenchers urging her to use the authority she doesn’t have to tell those ministers off, and a policy free-for-all caused by having no majority, today’s final PMQs before the summer should have been extremely painful for the Prime Minister. But while Jeremy Corbyn has arguably been a key factor in this whole miserable situation coming about for May, he is still quite handy when it comes to helping her survive what should be deeply miserable sessions in the Commons.

Theresa May is to rebuke her Cabinet tomorrow for the way its members have been behaving over the past week. What started as ‘warm prosecco’ plotting, as Damian Green put it, has now moved to open insults being traded over top notch champagne at Westminster parties and ministers telling journalists the gory details of Cabinet meetings. The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said this morning that ‘what I would say is of course cabinet must be able to hold discussions on government policy in private and the Prime Minister will be reminding her colleagues of that at Cabinet meeting tomorrow.

You’d think a government wouldn’t launch its flagship bill that takes Britain out of European Union legislation without first being clear what taking Britain out of the EU would actually look like. Apparently not: the once Great Repeal Bill - now just plain old European Union (Withdrawal) Bill for less triumphant times - was published today, and no-one is clear on Brexit at all.

Every political leader and government goes through a phase when their spin doctors feel they need a relaunch. For some, the relaunch comes after a number of good years. For Theresa May, her relaunch came on the anniversary of her becoming Prime Minister - and after a rather tumultuous year. As relaunches go, this wasn’t the standard speech where a leader at least gives the impression that they are moving onwards and upwards. Instead, it felt as though May was trying to make the best of a decision to downsize that she hadn’t taken. She couldn’t even promise to implement the recommendations of the Taylor Report, which she launched alongside her promise to stay on the path that she set out in her first speech in Downing Street a year go.

Time was when Theresa May ran such a tight ship as Prime Minister that even so much as talking off the record to journalists was seen as a bit of a risk for a Cabinet minister to take. But post-election, the Prime Minister has so little authority that a number of things that previously seemed impossible are now quite safe. The first is that it’s pretty much fine for a Cabinet minister to take a different stance to his or her colleagues. The main risk is not to the minister themselves but to the Prime Minister as her government appears to have five different stances on every important matter, with public sector pay being the most notable example.

Since Jeremy Corbyn’s surprisingly good election defeat, his MPs who previously plotted to get rid of him have been queuing up to pledge their allegiance to the Labour leader. They have been doing this partly because they did make some rather dire predictions about the impossibility of holding their own seats, or indeed of Labour surviving at all with Corbyn at the helm, and partly because most of them are under pressure from the Corbynites in their local party to apologise and show loyalty from now on. Luciana Berger’s local party is demanding an official apology from her to Corbyn for her previous criticisms of his leadership – something she has thus far steered away from offering.

This first week back in Parliament has proved quite how fragile the government’s power is. It may be able to govern in a technical sense - announcing bills, occupying Downing Street, and so on - but it cannot guarantee that it will get what it wants in the Commons. Having to accept the Stella Creasy amendment on free abortions for women from Northern Ireland shows that, but this is just the start of a legislative free-for-all in which MPs from all parties are able to propose changes to any bill ministers put forward, and know that they stand an unusual chance of success. It just takes a handful of Tory MPs to sympathise with these changes, and then the government must either accept the amendment or face humiliation and defeat in a successful rebellion.

The lady’s slipper orchid, Cypripedium calceolus, is both a beautiful and silly--looking plant. It is the strangest of our native orchids, with a fat yellow pouch and burgundy twisting petals. It doesn’t quite look as though it belongs in the gentle English countryside and, for a while, it didn’t belong at all. Why did I drive for two hours just to see one flower? In part because of its strange backstory. It’s not just a fabulous flower; it’s a plant that tells us about our society and the madness of all human nature. This flower sent Victorian botanists bonkers. They were so gripped by what was known as Orchidelirium that they couldn’t stop digging up the poor Cypripedium or picking its flowers.

What a very different atmosphere the House of Commons Chamber will have today for its first PMQs since the election. In the week before Parliament dissolved, Tory MPs were in a most obsequious mood, reciting the ‘strong and stable’ slogan that Theresa May started her campaign with, and even telling the Prime Minister that ‘I am confident that the country will be safe after the election under strong and stable leadership’ (sadly Peter Lilley, who made this prediction, stood down at the election and so is not in Parliament to offer his insight into how he feels about the state of the country now). It will be interesting to see if anyone bothers to praise May at all in this session.

It’s hardly a surprise that the Tories aren’t pushing ahead with plans for new grammar schools, and hardly a surprise that Education Secretary Justine Greening confirmed this quietly in a written answer to a parliamentary question. They neither want to cause an upset with a policy not universally supported by Tory MPs when they now have no majority to pass it, nor draw attention to the fact that the party can no longer be a radical reforming force in Parliament. Greening wrote in an answer published today that ‘there was no education bill in the Queen’s Speech, and therefore the ban on opening new grammar schools will remain in place’.