Senior Tories oddly supportive of Theresa May’s plan to stay

Theresa May’s announcement that she plans to serve as Prime Minister for ‘the long term’ has come as rather a surprise to her party. Cabinet ministers and senior backbenchers had hoped that all the talk of her sell-by-date and a leadership contest would have faded in time for the autumn, but this has stirred it up again. There are two schools of thought in the party as to whether the Prime Minister went into her interview yesterday intending to give a stronger line on whether or not she was going to leave. By and large those who are most unimpressed by the way she has led up to this point think that it was a deliberate move to show authority. Even those who think she was bounced into it believe that the Prime Minister was trying to quash speculation about having a precise leaving date. More interestingly, though, there are two schools of thought in the party as to whether it is really possible for a Prime Minister who lost seats in an election she had called to go into yet another election.