Evening Standard comment: Crisis at Number 10 as power fades at the top; Rail strikes must stop

Political leadership in Britain depends on powers of persuasion, patronage and the promise of future success. Theresa May’s future as leader of the Conservative Party is in crisis because she is struggling with all three .

First, she is failing to persuade her colleagues that her judgment calls on Brexit are the right ones. Her claim to office was that she alone could hold the Tories together, while landing an agreement with the European Union. It looks like she can do neither.

At Chequers this summer, she split her party. In the EU summits this autumn, she failed to deliver a deal.

The latest Downing Street claim, that Brexit is 95 per cent done, sounds about as plausible as a teenager telling their parents that their room is 95 per cent tidy. Extending the post-Brexit transition period by a few months solves nothing.

There is a collective realisation among her MPs now that her two-year-old tactic of kicking the can down the road is merely putting off the fundamental choices facing the Government and the country.

Second, Mrs May’s powers of patronage are waning. Not that she has been shy in exercising them — around a third of her Cabinet has had to be replaced in the past year, a modern record for premiers. But, remember, Boris Johnson and David Davis were not forced to quit; they chose to.

Prime ministers have a serious problem when senior members of their party think their career prospects are better served outside the Cabinet tent rather than inside it.

Third, Mrs May offers no promise of future success. She survived the aftermath of last year’s election fiasco only with an implicit commitment to the 1922 Committee that she would never lead them in another campaign.

She’s now trying to renege on that, saying she’s “in it for the long term”. So it is dawning on Tory MPs that she isn’t going to jump; she is going to have to be pushed. That’s why the 48 letters from MPs required to call a no-confidence vote are starting to pile up.

Indeed, it is apparently now so close that the 1922 Committee chair is privately warning those who sent in a letter long ago because of some forgotten grievance that, unless they withdraw their letter, they are in danger of triggering a contest accidentally.

Wednesday’s appearance by the Prime Minister before Tory backbenchers is not going to be the showdown that some are anticipating. Such events never are.

We predict she will get a rousing reception. But remember Iain Duncan Smith’s ovations at the Tory conference before his demise.

The louder the Tory MPs bang on their desks in a Commons committee room this week, the more we will know that Mrs May is in serious trouble.

Power is where power goes; and right now it is flowing fast away from Downing Street.

Rail strikes must stop

If you depend on South Western Railway services to Waterloo, the next few days are going to be grim.

Tomorrow the RMT union starts five days of strikes — which it plans to continue every Saturday next month, too. So what’s the cause? After all, you’d expect it to be about something crucial, given the vast impact it will have on so many working people’s lives.

Except, that is, when it comes to the ideological obsessions of a union that’s happy to wreck train services with one of the biggest strikes for years in defence of antique working practices which have nothing to do with safety or helping customers.

The RMT claims it is fighting to keep guards on trains — but the operator points out that it has “guaranteed a guard to be rostered on every single service, and our growth plans mean more guards, not fewer”. And they’re telling the truth.

The only thing that’s at stake is what these guards should do. Is their job to carry out tasks such as checking tickets and helping passengers — which is what the company that employs them wants? Or should they take their orders from the rail unions?

We’re clear: this is an absurd strike that shouldn’t go ahead, forced on passengers by a union desperate not to lose its outdated grip on the railways.

It’s time to give the RMT the red light.