Theresa May remains in place because there is still no agreed successor, I say in the magazine this week. As one senior Tory backbencher put it to me, ‘We take the view that while things are bloody awful, we don’t want to risk making things worse’.
So does this mean that despite all the drama of the last seven days, nothing has changed? Well, no—I think some things have changed. First, nearly all Tories now agree that the May government is listless. Perhaps the more remarkable thing about the reaction to that Nick Boles tweet is how no one is really trying to argue with the substance of it. Even some of May’s most loyal supporters admit that the government doesn’t have much of a domestic agenda; they blame this on how all-consuming Brexit is.
Second, there’s a growing consensus that the Number 10 operation isn’t working as it should.
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