Theresa May has quite a few challenges to meet this conference season. One is obviously to avoid the sort of farce that her speech descended into last year. Another is to try to unite the warring wings of her party and convince her MPs that Chequers really is the only game in town. But equally as important is the need to show she has things she wants to do when it comes to domestic policy.
This is hard: May hasn’t really managed to give that impression at any stage of her premiership, so to start in what feels like the swan song isn’t ideal. Added to that is the general mood in the Conservative Party, which isn’t a million miles away from Labour in 2009/10 at the end of a much longer stint in government. As I say in the Guardian today, the Tories are exhausted, bickering and appear to be out of ideas.
This lack of inspiration may make it harder for Cabinet ministers to respond to May’s request, reported in today’s Times, for ideas to go in next year’s Queen’s Speech. But a bigger complication is that few in the Cabinet really think there will be a Theresa May-led Queen’s Speech next year. Those who are leadership contenders merely want the Brexit negotiations out of the way so that they can avoid having to take sides and alienate one wing of the party or another. Even those who think May could hold on find themselves wondering what the point of offering radical ideas would be: anything complicated tends to end up gathering dust on the Prime Minister’s desk while she considers it – for a very long time.
But it is still better for the Prime Minister to give the impression of wanting to continue, even if she accepts that her fate is not in her hands. Otherwise, what remains of her authority will be further undermined by an acknowledgement that she is nearly finished.
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