(Times paywall) The Tory brand is being trashed all over again < any sobs here ? >
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-tory-brand-is-getting-trashed-again-0g6dl83tz
The Tories are said to be the oldest and most electorally successful party grouping anywhere in history.
That illustrious lineage, through three centuries of evolution,
has established in the public imagination an erroneous assumption that for all its faults the ruthless Conservative Party at least knows what it is doing when it comes to wielding power.
If anyone is still labouring under that delusion then events in recent days will surely have dispelled it.
The shambles Theresa May is making of forming a government invites an awkward question:
if the Tory party cannot any longer do “statecraft” then what is the point of it?
The attempts to forge a partnership with the Democratic Unionists suggest the Tory high command doesn’t have an answer.
This should not have been a difficult business to handle because the DUP regards Jeremy Corbyn as virtually a member of the IRA.
“There was no need for a formal deal,” says a baffled minister.
A simple but firm explanation to Unionists that defeating a Tory minority administration means Gerry Adams being a regular guest at Chequers should have sufficed.
Instead, almost a fortnight of back and forth has astonished the DUP,
which professes itself unnerved by the amateurish approach taken by No 10.
I wonder whether the Tory summer shambles
— after last year’s post-referendum antics and now this
— should be an annual event in the social season, alongside the Chelsea Flower Show, Glyndebourne, Ascot and Henley. 
.....
How long can the PM survive in such circumstances?
My assessment that she is finished, with colleagues attempting simply to get through until recess, was rejected as too pessimistic by one Tory aide.
Mrs May, she said, might go on much longer than that.
How long?
“Oh, until Conservative Party conference at the beginning of October.”
The long-term prognosis for a leader who was unassailable only a fortnight ago is thus under four months.
With Mrs May’s authority gone the Tory tribe is doing its vocal exercises ahead of the second act in what amounts to a three-act comic opera exploring the vicissitudes of leadership.
Last year act one featured Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom, David Cameron, George Osborne and Theresa May.
Some of the cast are back this summer, albeit in different roles