Dead woman walking? May faces crunch 48 hours in battle to save her premiership

The Prime Minister will tonight face a meeting of Conservative backbenchers before holding talks tomorrow with Arlene Foster, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party.

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Mrs May last night put the finishing touches to her new cabinet after her decision to bring back Leave campaigner Michael Gove as Environment Secretary and longtime ally Damian Green as First Secretary, a role that effectively makes him her second-in-command.

And with her political capital all but spent, the Prime Minister played it safe by keeping the majority of senior ministers in their previous roles.

During the election campaign Mr Gove – who one year ago torpedoed Boris Johnson’s leadership hopes and opposed Mrs May’s bid – rated his chances of playing for Bradford City higher than making a cabinet return under Mrs May.

One of the Cabinet’s first tasks when it meets today is to consider the draft ‘confidence and supply’ agreement sketched out with the DUP.

Finalising that deal with Mrs Foster is critical to Mrs May’s hopes of seeing off the threat of another general election in the short term and opening the Brexit talks on schedule.

Mrs May is expected to face tough questions when she meets backbench MPs at a meeting of the 1922 committee today. The Prime Minister will hear concerns over the conduct of the Conservative election campaign which saw the party lose its Commons majority rather than secure the landslide victory Mrs May had expected when she called the election three years early.

Some MPs are also likely to express discomfort over the pact with the DUP and its members’ views on issues such as climate change, same-sex marriage and abortion.

While the prospects of an immediate challenge to Mrs May were played down yesterday, Conservatives lined up to make it clear her time as party leader will be limited.

Former chancellor George Osborne suggested her premiership could collapse within a matter of days. He said: “Theresa May is a dead woman walking. It is just how long she is going to remain on death row.

“I think we will know very shortly. We could easily get to the middle of next week and it all collapses for her.”

Nicky Morgan, the former education secretary, said: “I think it is fairly clear that Theresa May cannot lead us into another election, obviously we don’t know when that is going to happen.

“I don’t think we should rush that but I do think if we are going to have a leadership contest in the Conservative Party what we cannot do is have another coronation like last summer.

“Our members have just worked their socks off for seven weeks and to think that we as a parliamentary party could shut them out of a future leadership contest would be deeply discourtous to them.”

Amid continued speculation that cabinet ministers were lining up behind a possible leadership challenge from Boris Johnson, a series of messages from the Foreign Secretary to MPs calling on them to back Mrs May emerged.

In the messages obtained by ITV, Mr Johnson is said to have written: “Folks we need to calm down and get behind the Prime Minister.

“She won more votes than anyone since Margaret Thatcher. I can’t remember us having anything like 43 per cent of the vote.”

He also said the public “do not want another election” and labelled Mrs May a “woman of extraordinary qualities”.

A confidence and supply agreement with the DUP would allow the Government to pass the Queen’s Speech and the Budget.

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