In the immediate aftermath of May’s disastrous conference speech, a senior backbencher told me ‘she’s one more crisis from oblivion’
On Wednesday, as Westminster reeled from the latest allegations of sexual impropriety, Theresa May finally decided to confront the storm engulfing British politics.
Preparing her keynote speech at the annual Spectator parliamentarian of the year awards, she inserted the following words.
‘I have made it a priority during my career to encourage a more diverse intake of MPs, as I know others have, too.
But we won’t get that more representative Parliament if Westminster is not a safe and secure place for everyone who works there.
‘Parliament, of all places, should be somewhere that our most cherished common values – decency, respect, fairness and equality – are upheld fully and without exception.
A place where women and men can work free from the threat or fear of harassment, bullying or intimidation. We all have a responsibility to work together across parties to do everything necessary to make that a reality.’
They were never delivered. A few hours later the Defence Secretary Michael Fallon had resigned, after being accused of improper behaviour towards Leader of the House Andrea Leadsom, and the crumbling dam separating the Cabinet from the scandal was swept away.
In the immediate aftermath of May’s disastrous conference speech, a senior backbencher told me ‘she’s one more crisis from oblivion’. This morning the Prime Minister finds herself engulfed in the biggest parliamentary crisis of her premiership.
Last week, as I highlighted, it was the hypocrisy surrounding the Labour party’s attitude to the politics of gender that was dominating the headlines.
But with staggering speed – and aided by what many Tory MPs regard as criminal incompetence by their party leadership – there is now serious discussion about whether the slew of allegations could precipitate the fall of Mrs May, or even her government.
It will ultimately be for the police, the Cabinet office and those in charge of the new regime of oversight to judge the scale and nature of the crimes perpetrated in the inappropriately named mother of parliaments.
And they will have a tough job, given the nature of reported offences ranges from rape all the way through to the disputed brushing of a knee. But Conservative MPs are not withholding judgment. They believe No10 has hung them out to dry.
‘It’s a disgrace,’ one MP told me. ‘Obviously all serious allegations have to be investigated. But it’s also the Prime Minister’s job to defend her MPs and her party from unsubstantiated and malicious attacks. And she’s failed to do it.’
At the heart of Tory anger is the so-called ‘Dodgy Dossier’, a spread sheet of 44 Conservative MPs supposedly engaged in questionable activity.
To some this has been a valuable tool in shining a much needed spotlight on the dark crevices of SW1. To others it represents a cut and paste job of gossip and reheated rumour.
I’ve never heard the level of vitriol I encountered on Thursday morning as it emerged May had appointed key ally and former chief whip Gavin Williamson in Fallon’s place
History will judge who is right. But while it’s still being written, it’s worth bearing in mind the following. Had this document been presented at a time when the Government was not already paralysed, it would probably never have left the pages of social media.
In the New Labour era, as soon as it came to light that a large number of the relationships documented were consensual, and that a significant number of other claims were simply false, the dossier would have been swiftly killed.
But, incredibly, it appears no co-ordinated attempt was made to provide a central rebuttal of the many spurious claims. I’ve been told Conservative central office believed it was the whips’ office job to respond. The whips thought it was Downing Street’s. And No10 thought it was everyone but theirs.
Some may welcome this new age of transparency. But a number of those falsely named in the ‘dossier’ were female researchers – the people our parliamentarians are now supposed to be protecting. And the argument they should be treated as acceptable collateral damage in a cleansing of the Augean stables is not washing with Tory backbenchers.
Gavin Williamson arrives at the Ministry of Defence after he was announced as the new British Defence Secretary on November 2
Of itself, the handling of the dossier would have been enough to call the Prime Minister’s judgment into question. But it was then compounded by the swiftest and most disastrous reshuffle in modern political history.
I’ve been working in and around politics for a quarter of a century. I’ve never heard the level of vitriol I encountered on Thursday morning as it emerged May had appointed key ally and former chief whip Gavin Williamson in Fallon’s place, and Williamson’s own closest friend Julian Smith as his replacement.
‘They’re seen as parasites,’ one ex-Minister told me. ‘By controlling intelligence they have massively manipulated and misled her. It’s so unpopular many colleagues are saying they will happily pile in and oppose Brexit and defence cuts.’
There is still a way she can get out ahead of all this. She is the nation’s most senior female parliamentarian. She worked in the financial sector throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Which is why this has now become an existential crisis for Mrs May.
Even for the most gifted politician, fighting on so many fronts would find them tested almost to destruction. A sex scandal. Brexit. A stuttering economy. Northern Ireland. The loss of her majority. The rise of Corbynism. But the Prime Minister does not possess those political gifts.
Theresa May does not need lectures from anyone about what it’s like for a woman to make her way in a world of male entitlement. She has experienced it first hand.
But she refuses to frame her response to the crisis in those terms. ‘She wants to be judged on her merits,’ a close ally told me this week. ‘She doesn’t want to play the woman card.’
Which, on one level, is admirable. But it may yet prove terminal.
‘Many are saying this is her biggest and probably last mistake,’ an MP told me as the fallout from the Fallon resignation reverberated around Westminster.
At the start of the week the working assumption was Theresa May was one crisis from oblivion. That crisis has now arrived with a vengeance.
Nervous Kemi leaves PM high and dry
The mystery of Theresa May’s catastrophic conference cough has finally been solved – and the blame for the debacle lies squarely on the shoulders of Kemi Badenoch.
‘It was all my fault,’ the newly elected Tory MP for Saffron Walden tells me. ‘I was the last warm-up speech before the Prime Minister came on, and I got very nervous, so I kept drinking all the water. Then Theresa came on with her dry throat, and there was none left.’
Don’t worry, Kemi. When the Government falls, all will be forgiven.