Ghost of Thatcher haunts May as she fights ouster plot

– ‘This cannot go on’ –

Thwarted in Brussels, May had hoped to revive her fortunes at last week’s party conference.

But her keynote speech was disrupted by a serial prankster who handed her an end of employment form, and she then suffered a series of coughing fits that made her combative message barely audible.

The sense of chaos only heightened when letters from the slogan “Building a Country that Works for Everyone” started falling off the board behind her.

“The sense that this cannot go on may now overwhelm her,” wrote Times columnist Philip Collins, one of a growing number of commentators saying that the leadership crisis has finally come to a head.

Pro-Brexit MPs do not want another leadership election to slow down the process, and there are fears the lack of party unity could hand power to opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

But Iain Begg, a politics professor at the London School of Economics, said the current climate had “an echo” of the 1990 demise of Thatcher at the hands of Conservative plotters.

That ouster was in turn followed by recriminations over Europe in the 1990s under John Major that eventually led to Labour’s Tony Blair taking office in 1997.

“If the wind goes against Theresa May she could be finished by as early as next week. But if the cabinet is behind her, she will survive,” he said.