Dominic Lawson (S Times paywall):
There are no Tories — only Theresa
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/there-are-no-tories-only-theresa-7f52833sm
"A candidate complained to me that the party was now ‘a cult of no personality’ 
"Will dealing with Downing Street after the securing of a colossal personal mandate be even more asphyxiating than it has been during the past few months of the May supremacy?
Those ministers live in almost constant fear of dressings-down from Mrs May’s joint chiefs of staff, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill.
The vast majority of voters will have heard of neither of these two unelected special advisers,
but they are the second and third most important political figures in the land
— and it is the 37-year-old Mr Timothy now writing the manifesto all those ministers will be expected to follow in the next parliament."
"as one Tory frequently in and out of No 10 put it to me:
“Try to imagine how powerful Nick Timothy is.
Now multiply by 400.
You still haven’t got it.”
This is only a continuation of the former regime at the Home Office, where the same advisers were her team’s inner core"
" the deadline < for suggestions in the Pm's red box > is 3pm on Friday, apparently:
— “to give Timothy and Hill time to weed out what they don’t want her to see”.
"I prefer to believe that this new rule is simply to allow Nick Timothy time to make his own comments on the ministerial suggestions in her red box.
Even then, it is interesting that May is so completely reliant on his interpretations."
"this secretive, politically friendless and yet virtuous woman has a surprising lack of self-confidence."
"But a lack of intellectual confidence in a leader can have the unfortunate consequence that she (or he) finds it impossible to accommodate first-class minds in her top team"
"Good policies emerge only from fearless internal argument:
this is as true in political organisations as it is in big corporations.
The biggest mistakes occur when those advising the person at the top become too afraid to speak truth to power."
For example, when Margaret Thatcher was determined to push through what became known as the poll tax, my father as chancellor was the only cabinet minister who argued against it.
Other senior colleagues could see the potential for disaster but did not want to risk conflict with a dominating prime minister.
Thatcher took quite a few years to become that dominant — and in her heyday relished difficult arguments with strong-minded colleagues."
"Still, the British public has always liked the idea of a strong leader who says what she’ll do and then does it.
Mrs May is gaining enormous electoral traction by appealing to that tradition.
Let’s hope such a mandate gives her the confidence not to run a cabinet of fearful mediocrity."