(paywall) Adam Boulton: Theresa May at the abyss with danger ahead and trouble behind
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/theresa-may-at-the-abyss-with-danger-ahead-and-trouble-behind-z6wkrbtkv
...Tory MPs still lingering in London could be found asking themselves:
was this the “worst week ever” for a government?
.....
On Monday Boris Johnson and Priti Patel were dangling by a thread, days after the defence secretary, Sir Michael Fallon, had fallen from office.
The foreign secretary’s carelessness had left a British citizen, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, in danger of another five years in an Iranian prison,
after he gave MPs an inaccurate, and from Tehran’s view incriminating, account of why she was in Iran when seeing her parents last year.
As for Patel, an extraordinary two-page statement from the international development secretary demonstrated that she had been careless as well as economical with the truth in her previous accounts of “a family holiday” in Israel.
She admitted that she had attended a series of meetings with senior Israeli officials, including the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu,
without British officials being present or informed fully about her freelance diplomacy.
The ambitious Patel may have thought her prospects could be helped by Lord Polak of Conservative Friends of Israel, her companion at some of her meetings.
Whether she also hoped to shift UK Middle East policy in an “alt-right” pro- Israeli direction remains an open question
— as does the claim in the Haaretz newspaper that she visited an Israeli outpost in what Britain regards as the illegally occupied Golan Heights.
Dark clouds also gathered over Damian Green, the most senior minister after May.
The first secretary of state is under Cabinet Office investigation for inappropriate behaviour and ...
stands accused by a former high-ranking police officer of having pornography on his office computers.
The release of the “Paradise Papers” seemed to tip the mood still more against the Tories.
Jeremy Corbyn has long campaigned against tax havens and the latest revelations tarnished icons including the Queen and Lewis Hamilton.
Those shaking their heads at Westminster speculated whether this guttering government’s plight is worse than Jim Callaghan’s in the late 1970s,
John Major’s in the 1990s
or Gordon Brown’s in the Noughties.
....
Neither the referendum outcome nor May’s attempt to unite the country behind her in the general election has succeeded in uniting the Conservative Party.
Instead it has been plunged into a disorderly nervous breakdown.
In supporting the government, many remainer Tory MPs are voting against what their consciences tell them is in the nation’s best interest.
Leavers, fearful perhaps that their prize may slip from them, are demanding an ever more fundamentalist interpretation of Brexit.
Some Conservatives earnestly desire no deal and a default to World Trade Organisation rules,
a prospect that was neither on the ballot paper nor endorsed by the “leave” campaigns.
The Brexit syndrome came into play as soon as it was obvious that Patel would go.
Having replaced Fallon with a fellow remainer in Gavin Williamson,
a weakened prime minister was seen to have no option but to appoint another Brexiteer, and another woman, to the new vacancy.
.....
Patel was not sacked over the phone but ordered to return home immediately from Kenya.
For a full day her journey was tracked on rolling news and parodied on social media.
“What got me was the ghost flight back from Africa.
I couldn’t understand why she or any of us were put through that,” wailed a senior official.
....
Unlike Major in his perilous years of de facto minority government, she has no praetorian guard of impressive political allies around her.
When the going got tough, Major relied on the vociferous loyalty of heavyweights
including Michael Heseltine, Douglas Hurd, Kenneth Clarke, Gillian Shephard, John Wakeham, Malcolm Rifkind, Ian Lang and Lord Cranborne.
There is no such roster of talent in today’s cabinet,
let alone a long list of colleagues prepared to give May outspoken public support.
Major’s “bastards” and their allies on the back benches were easily identified usual suspects.
Today’s “bastards” are all around May.
....
Boris Johnson is no Douglas Hurd, but he is the foreign secretary May still has.
As a public servant his offence over Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was more egregious than those known to have been committed by Fallon or Patel.
Yet he never looked in danger of losing his job.
....
Johnson had no need to resort to skulduggery.
He is too well known, too talismanic for Brexiteers
— and too much of a potential threat for the prime minister — to be sackable.
Even if she wanted to and there is little evidence she does.
When May makes a gesture towards pro-Europeans, it seems she usually matches it with a rather larger one to Brexit enthusiasts.
Patel was a dispensable thorn in her side.
Having removed it, the prime minister was in good form later the same evening at a gala dinner celebrating Paul Dacre’s quarter-century in charge of the Daily Mail, her most stalwart supporter in the national press.
....
May: “We will not tolerate attempts from any quarter to use the process of amendments to this bill as a mechanism to try to block the democratic wishes of the British people by attempting to slow down or stop our departure from the European Union.”
But who is “we”?
Amendments are a matter for the Speaker and votes are in the hands of MPs.
Lord Kerr (A50 author):
“We are not required to withdraw just because Mrs May sent her letter.
We can change our minds at any stage during the process.”
Another former Foreign Office head, Sir Simon Fraser, lectured the foreign policy think tank Chatham House on Britain after Brexit.
While not hiding his distaste for the decision, he gamely tried to suggest how he thought Britain could make the best of it.
His influential audience was not interested.
They wanted to know how Brexit could be stopped.
....
So long as Brexit legislation dominates parliamentary business, a major defeat for the government remains a live possibility
if troubled Conservative MPs were to combine with Labour.
The government could also come under attack from another direction.
Gordon Brown .... predicts public opinion will turn by next summer because
the red lines promised by the Brexit campaigners will have been breached in an “inadequate agreement . . . we will not have proper control of our border . . . our money . . . our courts . . . or our trade”.
If Brown is right, the Brexiteers could launch a torpedo against the deal and the government.
May faces the prolonged agony of trying to survive Commons votes night after night
.... If they can hold a majority in the Commons there is nothing forcing them to face the voters before the summer of 2022.
May still hopes for a relaunch to build a legacy away from Brexit
. ....
Both Hammond and May accept that they have nothing left to lose but their jobs.
...
May’s dependence on Hammond is greater because of the pickle in which her hand-picked deputy [Green] finds himself.
..... even Green’s friends doubt he will survive the investigation by the Cabinet Office propriety and ethics team.
In most organisations, pornography on a work computer is grounds for instant dismissal, even if it is not illegal.
The inappropriate conduct alleged against Green is about on a par with what got Fallon sacked.
Either a botched budget or Green’s departure could tip May out of No 10 by Christmas, according to some Tory MPs.
They are not entirely despondent about the party’s prospects under its next leader.
Optimists argue that on 40% in the latest YouGov poll they are “only” 3% behind Labour, compared with Major who fell 43.5% behind.
Tomorrow the search for life after May will get serious.
Amber Rudd, the home secretary, will be guest at the launch of “New Generation — the project for 21st-Century Conservatism”.
Their project aims to find “the new generation” from the 2015 and 2017 cohorts of MPs, and other fresh voices, to make that case.
They seem to have already given up on Theresa May.