Is Theresa May dancing towards a mini comeback?

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Anyway, as Westminster gets ready to get back to it next week when the Commons returns, at the start of what promises to be one of the most consequential and action-packed few months since the financial crisis, I offer one counter-intuitive if tentative thought. Might Theresa May somehow against all the odds be dancing towards a mini comeback?

(Stop laughing at the back.)

This is not a spoof, or one of those old Questions to Which the Answer is No from the popular series crafted by John Rentoul.

Few non-Corbynite writers have been more critical of the Prime Minister in print than me. Britain is attempting to navigate a change as complex and fraught as anything attempted in peacetime since 1945. A dexterous, savvy, functioning Prime Minister – a Churchill or a Thatcher – seems like a basic requirement in the circumstances. In the pages of The Times and on this site I have been one of those saying that May should go. Whenever I say it, the response from ministers – you’re absolutely right, but who, please God who, instead? – has grown wearier and more depressing by the week.

And there she is, still in office and this week visiting Africa on a trip which seems to have been pretty successful, not that you would know it if you followed the coverage. Or spent any time at all on social media, an increasingly grim experience.

The primary focus online seemed to be on May’s bad dancing. Assorted videos went viral of the “Maybot” nervously strutting her stuff when invited to dance by children. There was also some urban journalistic mockery of the choice of present for the South African President. May took him a trout fishing bag! So what? He likes trout fishing. Arguably, the Brits make the best such country kit in the world. A nice trout fishing bag for a trout fishing fan is a good present.

As someone who can barely dance, I stand, awkwardly, in solidarity with Theresa May. The coverage of the dancing was borderline bullying in tone. As a political hack who has written some silly “Thick of It” type stories down the years I can hardly complain about the trend towards political coverage as entertainment and comedy, but am I wrong to detect a wider stirring of sympathy for someone put on the spot and forced to dance?

The mockery of May bounced off this time.

Why? There is too much serious Brexit business to come, right ahead, for childish things to count for much. As a senior government figure described it to me this week, the situation is akin to facing a major set of exams and knowing, but not fully appreciating, that there will be adult life afterwards. In eight months time, no matter what happens, what is going to happen will have happened. Britain will have left the European Union with or without a deal under existing or new Tory leadership; or the government will have fallen somehow and we’ll have a terrifying anti-semitic Labour PM; or the British will have got down on their knees and begged the EU to let us back in spurred on by a bunch of Remainer fanatics waving European Union flags.

Exciting, isn’t it?…

Amid the chaos, there are scenarios in which May makes a mini comeback, and you have to be blinkered not to acknowledge the possibility. Here are a few possibilities:

May gets a deal.

Do not underestimate the relief there will be out there among business and non-ideological voters if a deal is done this winter. If it is close enough to the Chequers proposal to let May claim she got a workable compromise, then she’ll stand a very good chance of getting it through a weary parliament because there won’t be much alternative. ERG? What you got? We’re beyond the point at which vague op-eds in the Telegraph count.

I’m a moderate Brexiteer with harder Brexit friends. I love that we’re leaving the EU – cannot wait. But, I think the hardliners at least need to consider the possibility that a “harder the better Brexit” sounds a trifle bananas and has limited appeal in the country. If she gets a deal – transition for business, out of the institutions, and more than a vague commitment on the future – it will sound disconnected from reality to argue that it should be ditched at Christmas.

May flips to EEA/EFTA.

There are those agitating for it as the compromise position and it might be possible as a staging post on the way out. I doubt May will do it, but if needed it could give her a fresh start and suddenly become surprisingly popular as a compromise.

The talks crash – no deal.

This is always seen as presaging a sudden change of government. A leading Brexit analyst told me this week that Brussels says the baton then passes to Labour. Why? That’s not how parliamentary politics works. Apparently sufficient Tory MPs and DUP MPs would vote for an election in the middle of a national emergency. Unlikely, to say the least.

Any Prime Minister facing the collapse of talks is potentially in a surprisingly strong position to say in sombre fashion to the country: “Look, I have tried with the EU, really tried, compromised perhaps more than was ideal. They are rigidly determined to stick to their model and they don’t want a deal, or a deal that Britain can reasonably do. The EU has our phone number and we will work to agree temporary measures – a no deal deal – to minimise business disruption. I am restructuring the government tonight. I am putting Whitehall and all public services on full alert. There will be pain, but we have been through worse and this is not a country to be bullied. I am Theresa May, good night.”

What in response to that last outcome would Corbyn and his party say? That the government has presided over a mess. Sure, and then what? That the British government should ask for an extension and postpone or cancel Brexit because the EU is inflexible? And then beg the same EU, for what? Although the British are a quixotic lot, I can’t see this surrender being particularly popular other than among the most fanatical anti-Brexit crowd such as Gary Lineker (football chappie) and the overly excitable Lord Adonis.

This is not – not – to suggest that there is a long-term future for a May leadership, merely that there are paths through the next seven or eight months for the current Tory leader, and ways for her to recover her historical reputation somewhat.

Beyond Brexit, the Tories have had enough and the smarter of them know they need to reset to beat the far left, to tackle the housing crisis, to fire two thirds of the cabinet, to bring on the next generation, to make the economy more dynamic and to reform the tax system, to improve public services, to reform the constitution for post-Brexit realities, and to rebuild the UK’s national defences. That will be the task of their next leader, or the leader after that if the next is a stopgap.

Before then though, there might be another twist or two in the Theresa May story.

Have a good weekend.