Theresa May is back on a roll

To everyone’s amazement, Theresa May is on a roll. Over the course of the last four weeks, she has: seen the wood for the trees on Brexit and begun tentatively painting a positive, realistic picture of Britain outside the EU; stuck her teeth back into the domestic agenda with a thoughtful speech on housing; and become the first Western leader to stick up to bullying Russia,  elegantly revealing Marxist Jeremy Corbyn’s true colours in the process.

Her pragmatic, plodding, detail driven style of politics is finally coming into its own in the Brexit negotiations, and with the Skripal affair she seems to be having a mini Falklands moment. She has recovered remarkably from the bruising she received in last year’s election and gained from it some humility – a rare but very useful quality in politicians. Where Cameron and Osborne might have delighted in goading Corbyn on Russia and gloating about his awful anti-Britain stance, May adopted a melancholy, disappointed tone, which resonated far more powerfully with the country.

The turnaround is helping the Conservative Party poll above 40% in surveys. YouGov’s most recent poll puts the Conservatives on 41% – the same as in July last year, and two points behind a Labour party and its leadership that claims to be sweeping all before it.

There are problems though for the Tories. The government is not in great shape. For someone who professes to be entirely unclubbable the Prime Minister has a funny penchant for promoting her allies above other talent, to the detriment of good government.

Gavin ‘tarantula’ Williamson, who has been a stalwart supporter of May’s since the moment Cameron left office, is clearly unsuited to the job of Defence Secretary. As Chief Whip, he not only alienated many of his colleagues, he came close to bungling the post-election deal with the DUP – getting himself in trouble with Buckingham Palace. He might have been sacked, but instead he was promoted.

In his first major speech as Defence Secretary last week he revealed the depth of his inexperience when he told Russia to “shut up and go away”, immediately making himself the laughing stock of social media and uniting the divided Labour Party in contempt. He seems to think he could one day become prime minister.

His friend Julian Smith, one of six MPs who led the Parliamentary leadership campaign for May, is also under pressure as Chief Whip.

In a meeting yesterday intended to “clear the air” on the Brexit fishing debacle, Smith sparked a furious row with Conservative MPs from Cornwall and Scotland after telling them to accept Theresa May’s Brexit transition deal because “it’s not like the fishermen are going to vote Labour”. In Scotland, it is of course the SNP and not Labour who threaten Tory seats, and in Cornwall it is the Liberal Democrats. As one MP present at the meeting put it, the Chief Whip seems to “completely misunderstand what this is about and who our chief opponents even are.”

The perception persists that May was not brutal or bold enough in her last reshuffle. The government will need to be refreshed.

For now, though, congratulations are due to Theresa May, the prime minister who refused to take “no we don’t want you” as an answer – and is finally reaping the rewards.