Does Theresa May’s zombie government even want to survive?

Dealing with a hung parliament was never going to be easy, but no one quite foresaw the decay which now seems to have set in to Theresa May’s government. The best that can be said for the Prime Minister is that the past week’s events have weakened her rivals within the Conservative party. No one is talking up Priti Patel as a potential rival any more and a challenge from Boris Johnson is now highly unlikely, following his loose words about a British woman incarcerated in Iran — which the Iranian regime may use as a pretext to increase her sentence. Like John Major, the Prime Minister benefits from the feuding in the Cabinet and is kept in place by the fear that a leadership challenge would see the party rip itself apart.

Had Mrs May a majority of 100 or more — as she was widely expected to win in June’s election — such travails, together with the resignation of her Defence Secretary, the pornography allegations against her effective deputy, Damian Green, and the suspension of a backbench MP, Charlie Elphicke, on charges which have been referred to the police, would be a hugely damaging distraction.