Theresa May is under pressure to go – but the Conservatives have bigger worries than poor leadership

The PM’s replacement will still have a weak parliamentary position and a chimerical referendum result to enact.

Is this the promised end? “Lead or go” is the Spectator‘s cover story this week as the pressures mount on Theresa May. James Forsyth details the growing unease about the PM’s lack of leadership, revealing that one member of the inner Cabinet has taken to telling people that the Brexit decision-making process looks “looks worse from the inside than the outside”, like some kind of TARDIS of awfulness. Meanwhile, in the Sun, Tom Newton Dunn reveals that a junior minister is poised to quit and condemn May from the backbenches.

In his Telegraph column, defenestrated aide Nick Timothy warns that toppling Theresa May won’t improve the Tory position. “Whoever is prime minister, the political facts of life will not change. There will be a minority government. The Conservatives will be divided on Europe. And Whitehall will be swamped as it handles the complexity of our departure from the EU.” It’s easy to be cynical about Timothy’s motives but he’s got a point. May’s replacement is still going to have a weak parliamentary position and a chimerical referendum result to enact.

Although hostility to the PM is rising, fear of the alternatives hasn’t gone away either. Conservative MPs know full well that the contest, when it comes, will be chaotic and bloody. But everyone at Westminster is close to forgetting that the “political facts of life” aren’t the result of some cosmic misfortune on the PM’s part. When she did show leadership, she led the Conservative Party into an election result which we may yet see as the beginning of the party’s disintegration as a serious political force. Her – and the Tory party’s – weakness isn’t like being caught in bad weather. It is the result of conscious decisions made by May since she became Prime Minister.

The problem with all this “lead or go” stuff is that May can’t lead and she won’t go. Nor is it clear that if she did go that her replacement would be able to lead thanks to those “political facts.” And that’s the biggest cause of Tory anxiousness: that under May things are bad and getting worse but they might yet look back on even this period of crisis and decay with something approaching fondness compared to what’s still to come.