Even in this moment of chaos, Brexit governs all of Theresa May’s decisions

If a Brexiteer has to quit, a Brexiteer has to replace them, with as little fuss as possible; competence, experience and ability are secondary

Theresa May is no longer in full control of her appointments (Getty)

Is this the most divided, disorganised, unstable and weak government since the Second World War? The resignation – sacking in fact – of Priti Patel form her cabinet post is only the latest manifestation of an administration in a zombie-like state of decay. More will surely follow.

There have been minority governments, resignations, scandals and sleaze before, and sometimes even worse. After all, we have scarcely recovered from the MPs’ expenses scandals a few years ago, when faith in politics reached a low ebb. Now we find one of the more junior cabinet ministers, Ms Patel, organising her own foreign policy in the Middle East of all places – an absurd state of affairs. If the Prime Minister, as some allege, knew all about Ms Patel’s meetings with the Israeli Prime Minister, then it suggests very poor judgement indeed on her part. If Theresa May did not know what was going on it invites the question about how much fear and respect she commands among her own team.

Yet the litany of the sins of this Government are damning by any standard. Ministerial resignations and suspensions; sleaze pervading the parliamentary party; questions about her own grip on policy and personalities; scheming in the whips’ office (unusually nakedly, that is); a near contempt of Parliament in withholding, still, the 58 sector economic assessments of Brexit demanded by the House of Commons in a binding vote; a sluggish economy heading towards a nosedive; a catastrophic hard Brexit from the EU; the breakdown of government in Northern Ireland; the failures and cruelties of universal credit; crisis in the NHS – these are not the signs of a Government in control of events.

There have certainly been shambolic administrations before – the Major years spring immediately to mind – but no previous government has had to deal with an issue on the scale of Brexit with so little in the way of policy, such an intellectually underpowered team of ministers, and with a Prime Minister barely able to stamp her authority on her choice of breakfast cereal, let alone the future of the country.

All that, after the travails of Sir Michael Fallon, Priti Patel, Boris Johnson (again) and a range of Tory ministers and backbenchers apparently unable to control their personal urges, is perfectly clear. The trickier question is what, if anything, Ms May and her party can do about it.

The answer seems to be: very little. We are being governed by a coalition of the two wings of the Conservative Party – Brexiteers and non-Brexiteers. This has painfully limited the Prime Minister’s freedom of movement, because she has to balance ministerial appointments according to their views on Europe, as well as the other usual considerations of their wider political outlook and background.

If a Brexiteer has to quit, a Brexiteer has to replace them, with as little fuss as possible; competence, experience and ability are secondary. She lost her ability to override such considerations when she called and lost her snap general election. Even if she wanted to rearrange what talent there remains on the government front bench, she’s constrained from doing so.

The 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers now has a right of veto over the complexion of the Cabinet, as they had when she had to make do with her minimal post-election reshuffle and retain, most likely against her wishes, her Chancellor. That was the point at which she lost the two advisers who were closest to her. She turned, at that moment, to her old friend Damian Green to be the de facto Deputy Prime Minister. Now he, too, may be for the chop.

So it is difficult to see any useful reform and reconstruction of the Government coming from the current incumbent of No 10. Ms May is part of the problem, not the solution. Her conference speech, even had it been a smooth affair delivered without a prankster’s P45 and a supply of throat lozenges, failed to inspire with its words even on paper. Ms May, betraying something that few suspected, does not perhaps have a firm faith in any political creed, veering as she so often does from a Thatcherite defence of free markets to spraying public money at any political problem that finds its way into her in-tray, much to Philip Hammond’s frustration.

Can the nation look to the parliamentary Conservative Party for salvation? To ask the question is almost to answer it. The reason why Ms May is still where she is today, is because the Conservatives can’t see anyone better to replace her – which is the most damning indictment of all. It is correct, though; any of the likely contenders, including the “skip a generation” cohort, would face the same problems over Brexit, the same fundamental divisions and the same deep and irreconcilable schism over Europe that, one way or another, ended or blighted the leaderships of Margaret Thatcher, John Major, William Hague, David Cameron and now Ms May herself. The difference now is that those schisms are affecting the unity, stability and prospects for Britain as a whole, not just the Tories. A world where Priti Patel can become a lethally armed rebel, a force to be feared on the backbenches, is one where politics is seriously out of shape.

None of that can be taken to be an endorsement of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, which is, realistically, the only alternative party of government, and has scarcely fewer issues than Ms May’s (opposition being a much easier place to hide such things than in the hard media glare as the governing party). It is, though, simply to plead the question – surely we cannot carry on like this?