(Bloomberg) -- Halfway into her Conservative Party conference, Prime Minister Theresa May is still spending most of her airtime brushing off questions about Boris Johnson, whose latest climbdown was privately celebrated by her allies.
Her foreign secretary's all-too-frequent forays into Brexit have raised questions about his leadership ambitions and frustrated colleagues who just wanted to get through the four-day gathering without all the “psychodrama,” as Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson put it.
Late on Monday night, Johnson emerged to say he was behind “every comma, every full stop, every syllable of the prime minister's excellent Florence speech,” which he had undermined last month with his own 4,200-word essay on how the U.K. should manage the divorce.
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At cocktail-fueled parties Monday night, cabinet ministers loyal to May were pleased at how the latest chapter of the Johnson saga had played out. Their interpretation was that the perennial contender had destabilized the party to such an extent that he'd thwarted his own chances of securing support among rank-and-file Tory lawmakers.
One cabinet minister, who declined to be identified speaking on private matters, said lawmakers are incandescent with rage over Johnson going off piste. Without their support, he cannot get through the early rounds of a leadership vote. It's only in the final round when activists have their say. A second cabinet minister, asked about Johnson, dismissed his ambitions as an irrelevance, saying he'd missed his chance.
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"People want us to focus not on our own jobs, but on their jobs and their futures,'' May told the BBC today when asked why she did not fire Johnson. "I choose my cabinet, and you want to ensure that you have a range of voices sitting round the table because I think you make better decisions that way."
May is trying to make a virtue out of her political weakness, arguing that her failure to discipline her top diplomat for his insubordination on Brexit reflects a willingness to have dissenting voices around her. He has publicly dissented from the government's Brexit line twice in the past three weeks, most recently setting out “red lines” in an interview published Saturday.
He will address the Conservative Party conference in Manchester Tuesday afternoon but this time, May told broadcasters, his speech had been cleared by her office.
“Weak leadership is having a cabinet full of yes-men,” she told ITV's “Good Morning Britain” program. “Strong leadership is about having a diverse range of voices around the cabinet table who then come together.”
This hasn't always been her line. Until the June election left her crippled, she was quite willing to freeze out different voices, including that of Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond who is an advocate for a softer Brexit.
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Among party faithful in Manchester, she has to carefully measure her words in an effort not to derail talks in Brussels or frustrate the anti-EU hardliners flocking to see their hero Jacob Rees-Mogg at packed fringe events.
To that end, she's tried to move the Conservative message off Brexit, an effort frustrated by Johnson's interventions. An aide to May, speaking anonymously at the conference, said his maneuvering was now priced in to the premier's calculations.
"The mood here very much has been among MPs and party members that they're pretty unimpressed with those ministers who want to set down their own red lines on Brexit,” House of Commons Treasury Committee Chairwoman Nicky Morgan said on Tuesday in a Bloomberg Television interview when asked about Johnson.
Johnson's shenanigans have attracted attention from abroad. Manfred Weber, head of the European People's Party -- the biggest group in the European Parliament -- called on May to get rid of Johnson.
“Theresa May, please don't put your party first, put please Britain first, put please citizens first,” Weber, an ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, told the European lawmakers in Strasbourg, France. “And please no more speeches, show leadership on content. And the best probably would be: Please sack Johnson, because we need a clear answer who is responsible for the British position.”
--With assistance from Alex Morales and Viktoria Dendrinou
To contact the reporters on this story: Kitty Donaldson in Manchester, England at kdonaldson1@bloomberg.net, Robert Hutton in Manchester, England at rhutton1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Eddie Buckle
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