Political column - October 11

Yes - it's Tessxit.

Colleagues have rallied around. MPs have called for unity. The Cabinet is getting behind her.

Even Michael Heseltine (a former Shrewsbury School boy, no less) has been wading in and having his say.

After Theresa May's troubles at the party conference, it is a great show of unity and support for the leader.

Or it might be yet another example of the little death dance that the Conservatives perform in these circumstances. They dance round the leader, smiling, cheering, waving, and as they do so they are pondering what would be the most propitious time to make her a sacrifice.

Should it be in the short term? Or should it be in the longer term?

Theresa May has many fine qualities. They all say so. But in her term of office we have discovered that she lacks what in politics, as in life, is the most important quality of all. Luck.

And if it is true that you can make your own luck, then the luck she has made for herself has been bad luck.

For the truly lucky politician, even bad luck can be good luck.

Churchill is an example of somebody blessed with great luck and whose bad luck became good luck.

Getting off a boat, he wrenched his shoulder. Bad luck, Winston. But it meant that in the charge at the Battle of Omdurman, while his colleagues carried lances and swords, with his dodgy shoulder he had instead a Mauser pistol, which saved his life in close-quarters combat.

During the Great War, he was briefly called away from the line on what he regarded irritably as a fool's errand. When he returned, he found that the dugout where he had been, had sustained a direct hit.

In the 1930s he was a washed-up political has-been, a voice in the wilderness warning of the rise of Hitler and the need to rearm, his days in high office seemingly over for good. It meant that with the coming of war he was not tainted by the stain of appeasement which hung over leading Tories and Churchill was supported by Labour MPs - and that is not a misprint - to become Prime Minister in 1940.

It should not matter that Mrs May had a coughing fit, the conference props fell to pieces, and she was handed a P45 by a prankster. But it does matter, because it is not good for the morale of a party already feeling nervous after Labour's better than expected performance in the June general election.

Having these things happen does not reinforce an impression of strong and stable leadership. Instead they impart an air of vulnerability and raise the question of whether Mrs May is somehow jinxed.

Which is why the odds look against Mrs May leading the Tories into the next general election. Who wants to be led into a general election by a leader who is self-evidently jinxed?

Mrs May does however have something going for her at the time being which will probably delay Tessxit. And that is Brexit.

It brings to mind that chilling scene in The Godfather when Al Pacino says to his pet hitman: "I don't want anything to happen to Fredo."

There is then a pause before he adds: "While my mother's alive."

The Brexit process is the protective mother for Mrs May as the negotiations are something many will feel that she needs to see through as Prime Minister, keeping the thread of continuity on the British side of the table.

There again, as the negotiations are being done by David Davis and his merry bunch, a change of Prime Minister would be more of a inconvenience than a catastrophe.

Another thing that Mrs May has going for her - although it hasn't stopped the Tories ditching leaders in the past - is the lack of an obvious successor.

There does not seem to be any appetite for the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, in the role. It might also be noted that while Mr Hammond gave Mrs May a throat lozenge, the Chancellor's medicine demonstrably did not work.

The idea of Boris Johnson becoming Prime Minister sets many holding their head in their hands and running in panicked circles. Ruth Davidson is not even in the Commons.

Amber Rudd? David Davis? They look reasonable punts in a small field.

On Tessxit, and Brexit, the clock is ticking. If Mrs May is to survive, her luck has to change.

Because if the Tories regard her as an unlucky charm, she will be destined to find she has more time for walking in Snowdonia.