All by herself

Few people would choose to celebrate their birthday by listening to Philip Hammond speak, but that is the pleasure that awaits Theresa May on Monday. On Tuesday she must suffer in silence as Boris Johnson derails Tory party conference with an appeal to ‘chuck Chequers’.

It’s hard not to pity the Prime Minister. She is now horribly isolated. Both in her own cabinet and in Europe, she has few allies. As she tries to sell her Chequers plan, almost nobody is backing it or her. Other prime ministers have endured difficult periods. Few have faced them with as little support. It is no coincidence that Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish Tories, now says she doesn’t want to be PM. She has seen inside No. 10 — and knows that it is ‘the loneliest job in the world’.

The Salzburg snub last week, when Brussels rejected Theresa May’s plan for a future relationship between Britain and the EU, made the Prime Minister seem not only weak but abject. She turned up to the European summit expecting lukewarm support that would help her through the Tory conference. She wanted to show that the EU would engage with her Chequers plan; that the strain on Tory party unity was worth it.

Instead, she was spurned, even betrayed. She had spoken to Donald Tusk on Thursday and the two even retired to the balcony to talk with no aides present. As president of the European Council, Tusk might have told her in robust language that he would have to reject her Chequers plan. But the British side complains that he gave her no clue of what he was about to say. As the EU made brutally clear last week, it is only interested in May’s plan to the extent that it paves the way for further concessions.