The Telegraph is sometimes known as The Torygraph and might be thought of as the bellweather of British Conservative thinking. If so, yesterday's on-line edition gave a measure of where the party is at the moment. I give you below links to several stories, which appeared almost side-by-side, together with the headline and the opening paragraph. The rest of the stories are behind a paywall but you really don't need the detail to see what the thinking is, regardless of whether or not Mrs May wins tonight's vote of no-confidence.
First is someone called Sherelle Jacobs, said to be assistant comment editor, whatever that is:
Mrs May has reduced Brexit to the international symbol of 'shambolic Britain'. She must go now
Even those of us who have run out of oxygen with which to sigh at the PM's attitude to Brexit - the pathological procrastinating, the soviet-like surreptitiousness, the disgraceful lack of ambition - cannot help but be both disturbed and gripped by Theresa May's refusal to resign even now, as Parliament goes into meltdown, the Tory party cannibalises itself and Britain becomes an international laughing stock. What gallant, gloomy, deluded determination.
Then Andrea Jenkyns, Conservative MP for Ed Balls old seat in Castleford
It was no surprise to me that the Prime Minister decided to postpone the vote on her Withdrawal Agreement. With 100 of her own MPs, plus the DUP, planning to vote against it, a loss on such a scale would have surely meant the end of her premiership. Now she may live to fight another day, but she is only delaying the inevitable while doing further damage to her reputation. Her days in Downing Street are numbered and it is time the country got behind a new leader, one who believes in Brexit.
Next is Tim Stanley, a columnist:
To summarise: the Government has negotiated a withdrawal deal with the EU, shaken on it, taken it to Parliament, realised it hasn’t got enough support, and pulled the vote at the last minute, promising to seek assurances on the exact deal it has just negotiated. It’s mad, quite mad, and the maddest-looking person of all is the Prime Minister, who told the Commons yesterday that while she is “clear” that this deal is super, she will now seek “clarity” on precisely what’s in it. I give up. As my old friend keeps saying: “I think the world is being run by a skeleton staff of idiots”.
What makes it so much worse is that this was predictable. This is a pro-Brexit newspaper but ...
And then Rob Wilson, another Conservative MP, this time for Reading East:
When you want your Prime Minister and Party to be successful, it is hard as a Conservative to say I told you so. But just as predicted several weeks ago, the Prime Minister did not go through with a meaningful vote on her Withdrawal Treaty. It was obvious that her deal was political suicide and would end her Government - she pulled back just in time.
So the problem is shelved, can kicked further down the road and the Prime Minister continues in office, but hardly in power. For a few days at least. She is now completely at the mercy of others and of events, never a good place for a leader to be.
Followed by another columnist, Allison Pearson:
On Friday, I had the dubious pleasure of debating a second referendum on Radio 4’s The World at One with Alastair Campbell. I say debating, but Tony Blair’s former spin doctor is one of Nature’s monologists. In the rare moments when Campbell briefly falls silent and you are allowed to get a word in edgeways, you can actually hear his resentful impatience, a simmering static down the line.
Then Crispin Blunt, MP and chairman of the Defence Select Committee:
As Jacob Rees-Mogg recently found out, and I discovered in 2003 when I resigned as one of Iain Duncan Smith's shadow ministers, leading a public rebellion is deeply uncomfortable. It is unlikely to do your immediate prospects any good either.
So it was with very mixed feelings that I let it be known that I have joined Jacob and a number of other colleagues in writing to Sir Graham Brady to ask for a vote of no confidence in Theresa May.
Another columnist Asa Bennett:
Only Theresa May could announce that she was delaying the vote on her Brexit deal while also insisting she was still acting on "the message that I get from people up and down the country... deliver on the vote, get on with it."
After trying to flog MPs what she called "the only deal on offer", the Prime Minister has decided that she needs a better deal to offer them. But her mission to secure a "legally-binding assurance" from Brussels that the Irish backstop is not permanent has already come a cropper. European leaders have been queuing up to make clear that they are not willing to change the legally-binding part of the deal, the withdrawal agreement.
Leo McKinstry, political commentator:
At last, the end of the nightmare is in sight. Today Conservative MPs have the chance to finish off Theresa May’s leadership,
which has been a catastrophe for both her party and the country. She
has been perhaps the worst Prime Minister in modern history, a one-woman
wrecking ball at the heart of our democracy.
There is not a single, coherent argument that can be advanced for her
retention of the premiership. Her authority is in tatters. She cannot
command a majority in the House of Commons. Her plan for Brexit is
despised on all sides
Camill Tominey, Assistant Editor:
Looking ahead to tonight’s confidence vote, it is hard to believe that Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech
less than two years ago yielded headlines such as: “May to EU: give us a
fair deal or you’ll be crushed” as she warned Brussels she would “walk
away from a bad deal”.
Many blame the potentially career-ending change in Mrs May’s rhetoric
from “no deal is better than a bad deal” to “it’s my deal or no Brexit”
on the Remainers that have formed her “tiny” sphere of influence since
the departure of her joint chiefs of staff Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill
following last year’s disastrous election.
Whatever the result of tonight's vote, it's hard to see how Mrs May can continue as PM. The vote may show 100+ Conservative MPs opposed to her and headlines like these in the Tory party's bible will surely make her premiership impossible. She will be seriously weakened.
Things are not going well, with the Tory party or Brexit. But they are tied together and they will both go down together.
