‘I get so frustrated with Whitehall’

The Prime Minister’s office is a small, unimpressive room in 10 Downing Street with miserable views and unexceptional furniture. Since moving in, Theresa May has spruced it up — but only a little. There is now a large glass meeting table; her predecessor preferred to chat on the sofas. She has also delved into the government art collection to retrieve two pictures of Oxford, where she honed her interest in politics and met Philip, her husband. She has also picked a painting of an English country church (she is of course a vicar’s daughter), and that’s about it. It’s a place for work and — very occasionally — interviews.

We meet a few weeks after Mrs May won The Spectator’s Politician of the Year award. She had been expected to turn up to the ceremony, say a few polite thank-yous, and head back to No. 10 for more work. Instead, she walked on to the stage wearing a high-vis jacket, a joke at the expense of our guest of honour, George Osborne, whom she had defenestrated when she became Prime Minister.