In defeat, Theresa May has done what David Cameron couldn’t

Today the House rises for summer recess and, as James writes, Downing Street achieves its immediate post-election aim: Theresa May makes it to the summer recess. The government hopes the break will allow the party to regroup and come back more focused and more united. Whether that happens or not, what is clear is that the Prime Minister’s position will be uphill.

Following her fateful decision to call an early election which saw the Conservatives lose their majority, May is a diminished figure – both within her party and in public. MPs openly make jokes at her expense at parties while her Cabinet talk freely now that her authority is shot. Her former colleague George Osborne describes her as a ‘dead woman walking’, and in the Chamber things aren’t much better: the opposition throw back her doomed 2017 election slogan of ‘strong and stable leadership’ and taunt her claim that without the Tories there would be a ‘coalition of chaos’.