I can think of many MPs who could become Tory leader. But not yet

The Conservative party is so split it is in danger of destroying itself. Theresa May was going to deal with this problem by winning an enormous parliamentary majority, so she could push ahead with Brexit and ride roughshod over whichever faction on her backbenches thought the compromise deal she reached with Brussels was simply not good enough.

This gamble failed when the public refused to make her an elected dictator. She has instead lost even the slight majority she inherited from David Cameron, and her authority is shot to pieces.

So what is the party’s Plan B? Day by day it becomes clearer that it does not have one. There is general agreement that May is to blame for calling the election, and fighting a very bad campaign, but absolutely no agreement on who should replace her.

Whoever emerges, however fleetingly and unconvincingly, as the frontrunner to succeed her is at once briefed against with merciless intent by his or her rivals. This has happened in the last few weeks to Boris Johnson, David Davis and Philip Hammond.

It leaves a bad taste in the mouth, and diminishes those on whose behalf the briefing is carried out, even more than those who are its victims. The result has been to make Conservatives feel that no well-known figure who has become involved, however accidentally, in this inglorious jockeying for position would be tolerable as the next leader.

The question then becomes: is there some unknown figure who can save the day? It is true that the Conservative backbenches, and lower ministerial ranks, are rich in talent. I can without much difficulty think of half a dozen Tory MPs who might have the ability one day to lead the party.

But they do not have the ability to lead it now. The analogy of Cameron will not do. It is true he had been an MP for only four years when he ran for the leadership, and won it by showing more promise than any of his rivals.

Cameron was not, however, anything like as much of a newcomer as he pretended. He had started in the Conservative research department straight out of university, when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, and had drafted Norman Lamont’s immortal words on Black Wednesday in 1992, when the pound crashed out of the European exchange rate mechanism: “Today has been an extremely difficult and turbulent day.”

By 2005 Cameron was the well-trained candidate of the party establishment, and could play himself in over the next five years by carrying out the admittedly arduous duties of leader of the opposition. If someone like him took over now, he or she would at once face executive responsibilities of the most taxing kind. That is simply not on.

Whenever I am perplexed by the future of the Conservative party, I ring a shire Tory, buried deep in the English countryside, so immune to metropolitan fads. She is a kind of one-woman focus group, who reaches conclusions shared by many other Conservatives.

On asking her who should be the next leader of the party, she said this was such a difficult problem that I would have to ring back the next morning. She then said: “I think we’d better stick with Theresa May for the moment. We don’t want any more upheavals, because I’m hoping that on her holidays she may get a bit of perspective back and her guts back. She has had a terrible beating.”

The conventional Tory wisdom is that May had better carry on. But if the Alpine air does not revive her as much as her supporters hope, and a caretaker is needed, my money would be on her old friend Damian Green, currently serving as first secretary of state: an amiable and trustworthy figure who has shown a commendable absence of desire to become prime minster.

Andrew Gimson is a contributor to ConservativeHome, and will next year bring out his book ‘Gimson’s Prime Ministers: Brief Lives of Britain’s PMs from Walpole to May’