Theresa May is a control freak who will have to let go if she wants to succeed as Prime Minister

Theresa May will be driven to distraction if she tries to micro-manage everything from the centre and should remember what happened when Gordon Brown tried to do the same

May told Tory MPs at a leadership hustings that she would restore proper cabinet government (Getty)

Even people who worked closely with Theresa May at the Home Office describe her as a woman of mystery. No wonder that many voters will feel that they barely know our new Prime Minister. We would have learnt more about her if she had fought the expected nine-week Tory leadership election, but her opponents all fell by the wayside.

The Cameron-Osborne duopoly that has run the Conservative Party since 2005 has certainly learnt more about May in recent days. Their gang of modernisers, dubbed the “Notting Hill set”, is seething at the massacre of their troops in May’s dramatic Cabinet reshuffle. If anyone doubted she would be her own woman in Downing Street, there are no doubts now.

The Cameroons hoped she was the “continuity candidate” and helped her to defeat Andrea Leadsom. They saw her as the “Stop Boris” candidate but she handed him the Foreign Office job that George Osborne wanted. “We gave her our machine, and she turned the guns on us,” one Tory MP groaned. The posh boys and their allies are in exile, replaced mainly by state school educated meritocrats charged with implementing May’s “blue collar Conservatism”.

The clues to May’s agenda were in a speech she made in 2013 that raised eyebrows in Cameron-Osborne land because it ranged well beyond her Home Office brief. It was a rehearsal for the words she spoke outside Number 10 on Wednesday upon becoming Prime Minister. Three years ago, May told a ConservativeHome conference that capitalism had to be reformed so that it worked for everyone, and trailed new laws on corporate governance. She said then: “We have to become the party that is tireless in confronting vested interests. The party that takes power from the elites and gives it to the people. The party not just of those who have already made it, but the home of those who want to work hard and get on in life.”

This landmark speech suggests that the new Prime Minister, who is known as ultra-cautious, may prove to be more radical than we might expect. She argued that the Tories should break the state’s monopoly over delivering public services and have “an open mind” about allowing “hundreds or even thousands” of charities, companies and co-operatives that deliver frontline services to make a profit – a highly controversial move if it were extended to areas such as schools.

The Prime Minister may judge that she has enough on her plate for now. The civil service certainly has. Whitehall is overwhelmed after the referendum decision and was ill-prepared: there was no Plan B for Brexit on the spurious grounds that those campaigning for it did not know what it meant. There are 20 officials working on trade and we need 300 as we go it alone outside the EU. May’s decision to move the Whitehall furniture around – by abolishing the Department of Energy and Climate Change, and changing the remit of the Business and Education departments – is another time-consuming distraction.

She will be a hard taskmaster. “She’s a Stakhanovite and works harder than anyone,” said Damian Green, a former Home Office minister under May and one of the allies she promoted the Cabinet – as Work and Pensions Secretary. He told the Institute for Government that she was “a bit of a control freak”, but insisted that was not a criticism.

May told Tory MPs at a leadership hustings that she would restore proper cabinet government. Cameron promised the same, in a reaction against the informal “sofa style” government of Tony Blair. Its shortcomings were laid bare in this month’s damning Chilcot report into the Iraq War: plans were not discussed with senior ministers directly involved for fear they would leak and the Attorney General’s full advice on the legality of war was not circulated to the Cabinet.

Cameron regarded himself as captain of the team and tried to let his ministers get on with the job. There was a more formal decision-making structure during the Coalition government, although Tory MPs whinged that this handed too much power to “the Quad” – Cameron, Osborne, Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander, Osborne’s Liberal Democrat deputy – which resolved disputes between the two parties. Tory ministers increasingly complained about Downing Street control freakery and some announced policies without telling Number 10 so they could not be blocked or stolen and announced by Cameron.

May’s allies insist that her appointment of friends and allies in her brutal reshuffle means she can trust them to get on with the job. But some who worked with her at the Home Office are not so sure.

She will be driven to distraction if she tries to micro-manage everything from the centre and should remember what happened when Gordon Brown tried to. The massive challenge of the Brexit negotiations makes it even more important that May learns how to let go and delegate. The success of her Government may depend on it.