The Tory drift goes on – but replacing May is impossible

‘We take the view that while things are bloody awful, we don’t want to risk making things worse.’ That is how one senior Tory backbencher sums up the mood of the parliamentary party. No one disputes that the Conservatives are in the doldrums. There is no wind in the government’s sails. No. 10 doesn’t know where it wants to take the country. This general sense of drift is interrupted by the occasional squall.

The latest storm was caused by Nick Boles’s criticism of Theresa May. On Friday evening, the former housing minister took to Twitter to lament the lack of a radical government agenda and to tell the Prime Minister to raise her game. Immediately, Westminster began wondering what he was up to. Who he was speaking for? After all, Boles has form. More than anyone else, he persuaded Michael Gove to break dramatically with Boris Johnson during the last leadership contest and stand in his own right. I asked one long-standing May critic if Boles was co-ordinating with others. ‘There’s no plan — as always,’ they answered.

Boles’s frustration, I understand, has been growing since his meeting with May after Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday. There, he tried to persuade her of the merits of a radical change to housing policy, but got nowhere. Tellingly, however, Tory MPs didn’t turn on Boles in the way they did with those who argued that May should stand down after the party conference. One source, who has a low opinion of Boles, told me that he was in this instance ‘spot-on’ and that the ‘visionless mediocrity of May and team is a terrible waste’.

Even Nicholas Soames, normally a leadership loyalist, made public his agreement with Boles. Indeed, perhaps the most remarkable thing about the reaction to the Boles tweet was how little effort there was to argue with it.