And who could blame her? Pilloried from all sides, she manages the intractable Brexit process with a divided public, irascible Party, no Commons majority, and a disloyal Cabinet snapping at her heels. Every day must be purgatory.

Whatever her critics say, however, Theresa May is a decent person with a huge sense of public service and a work ethic second to none. It is these characteristics, combined with a desire to atone for her disastrous General Election campaign, which has led everyone to assume she will carry on. There are no more General Elections for her to fight. Taking us out of the EU successfully was to be her legacy.

But will it? The constant pounding from critics and the seemingly insurmountable hurdles at every stage of the Brexit negotiations must be taking their toll and perhaps she has had enough.

Here are a few pointers to support this view. She is now standing up to her Brexiteer colleagues in public and in private, some would say recklessly, caring less and less about the consequences for her premiership.

She is prepared to extend the customs union transition period to 2023 to sort out border issues with Northern Ireland. Essentially she has told Rees-Mogg and his merry band of European Research Groupers to shove it.

She will take on the Lords with a series of make-it or break-it votes in the Commons to overturn their amendments to EU exit legislation.

Rumours of an Autumn election are also bubbling under the surface.

It is now or never for Theresa May and never looks an increasingly enticing option to watching Brexit drift onto the rocks. At least nobody could say she didn’t try hard enough before reaching this point.

Chris Grayling, Secretary of State for Transport, is not everybody’s cup of tea. Unpopular in his previous role as Justice Secretary and an arch-Brexiteer, his profile often seems to confirm the worst prejudices towards a right-wing Tory.

Yet I beg to disagree. Actually, he is a solid cabinet minister. He is supportive of the unprecedented challenges Theresa May faces and refuses to leak cabinet discussions unlike his flakier Brexit colleagues who, in any other circumstances, would have been fired by now.

And, as a bit of a transport geek, he has also finally found his raison d’etre as Transport Secretary. He is rather good at it.

Let me explain why. Chris Grayling is committed to ‘public transport’ but also its privatisation, believing it is the best way to deliver a superior service. However, on trains, he certainly wouldn’t have started from here as he brings the East Coast Main Line back under government control.

He would have combined track infrastructure and service providers on a regional basis so the one cannot blame the other. On franchise bidding, he understands the dangers of going with the highest bidder and would not have necessarily done so. But he also doesn’t rule out the same bidders coming back with smarter proposals. Pragmatism is everything.

He is committed to investment in transport as long as it is accountable to the taxpayer. Take HS2 for example. He is frustrated that this was positioned as a vanity speed project. Despite its cost it is about much needed new capacity, not speed, and if it had been positioned in this way, there would not be the opposition there is now.

In other areas of transport, whether you like Heathrow expansion or not, a decision had to be taken and he took it.  And he is cooperating with the EU on a new plan for sharing the skies post Brexit. Incidentally, on air travel issues, he successfully repatriated hundreds of thousands of stranded Monarch passengers when the airline went bust at little or no cost to the affected individuals.  His road policies also mostly involve sensitive by-passes to meet local needs.

On the debate of public versus privatisation of rail, those who advocate long term public ownership rarely refer to the chaos of the old British Rail and its shoddy, unaccountable services. In France, Macron is heading in the opposite direction. Does anybody really believe a Labour government, made up of the current front bench, could run a proverbial whelk stall, let alone a railway network? How would transport investment priorities stack up with all the other spending promises Labour have made?

Transport is hamstrung by a shortage of funds like many other infrastructure projects. Rail privatisation in particular has been wrongly executed which has exacerbated the challenges of delivering a service ‘fit for purpose’. The current Transport Secretary is trying to avoid the buffers and put things right. It will take time and there will be no thanks at the end of it. Worth pointing out though.

 

I am confused. I loathe much of the world’s current political discourse led by the likes of Trump, Putin, Xi, Erdogan, to name but a few, but are these quasi demagogues more effective than reasonable leaders?

Xi, who is now ‘President for Life’, is busily rooting out corruption, building the economy and the prerequisite military, accompanied by a few new islands in the South China Sea. Putin invaded Crimea, takes out troublesome opponents, plays social media beautifully to wrong foot his overseas enemies and is heading to become Russia’s longest serving leader since Stalin. Erdogan is assuming an executive presidency of unprecedented power in modern day Turkey. Thousands of political opponents are jailed but the infrastructure and, with it, the wealth and the middle class in Turkey are currently expanding rapidly.

And Trump…Well what can we say? A record breaking tax reduction, peace with North Korea (?). Will tearing up the Iran nuclear settlement now also bring Iran to heel? Umm…

Reasonable leaders, of course, do get more things done. It just takes time and in an age of populism, people are particularly impatient. Perhaps more importantly such leaders provide a framework for the rule of law and a level of public discourse that civilises human interaction, ultimately benefitting all of us but particularly the poorest in societies.

In contrast, let’s just look at the evidence behind the bold actions of some of those unreasonable leaders. Putin is impoverishing his nation. Russian economic growth fell for three years in a row to 2017 and is permanently weak. Displays of military might hide an ailing country, shorn of any economic and democratic progress. It is no longer a super power in any sense. Xi and Erdogan, like Putin, free from even peer group accountability, are storing up ‘cult of personality issues’ which could potentially and ultimately overwhelm any economic success.

As for Trump, he lies, cheats and corrodes public discourse. The deficit is expanding rapidly due to those tax cuts. He withdraws America from much of the world stage leaving it to others, turns his back on global warming and stirs tensions in the Middle East. He is shrinking his country, not making it great.

Reasonable leaders such as Obama, Merkel, Macron and indeed most leading politicians in the democratic West have achieved much. They understand/understood the complexities of their roles and the long term consequences of bowing too far to short term populism. They are held to account and are a civilising influence in public life, with all the long term benefits that brings.

It is soft power that counts in the end. Reasonable leaders do get things done and done well. It just takes time. Unreasonable leaders can get things done and done quickly but often with terrible longer term consequences. Of course, they will have left the stage by then.

Yesterday’s local elections essentially confirmed the national opinion polls. Conservatives holding steady, gaining from a collapse in UKIP (surely wholly dead in the water now as the Tories have assumed their mantle), Labour just behind and the Liberal Democrats, as puzzling as ever, making little headway.

But the big issue is why Labour didn’t trounce the Tories. In the face of chaotic Brexit negotiations and some howling own goals such as Windrush they should have done. The reasons are several:

• Fear of the left-wing extremism of Labour has got through to a good proportion of the electorate
• Failing to offer a credible alternative to the Conservatives on Brexit
• Internal scandals, most notably anti-Semitism, which simply loops back to the perception of the extreme nature of today’s Labour Party

At the heart of all this is Corbyn, supported by a talentless front bench. He refuses to be bold on Europe and there is still a sense he feels the EU is a capitalist conspiracy. He fails to skewer the Tories in Parliament when they are sometimes hopeless. He has failed to tackle convincingly the extremism of his supporters (just read their twitter feeds) and the vile anti-Semitism that lurks in some corners of his Party. This is probably why the Tories regained Barnet alone.

Labour do not offer a convincing alternative to the Tories under Corbyn, many of whom would prefer one as an incentive to up their game. Had someone of Blair’s Opposition calibre been leader Labour would now be 20-30% ahead.

Even if they stay committed to a purer form of socialism it is time for Labour to recalibrate themselves without Corbyn. They need a sharper, more nimble leader dealing with the points above who, in the process, could at least lure one or two of the more able backbench MPs back into the fold.

Of course, except in helping to buy Theresa May time, these elections are a poor guide to the future. The pitfalls of Brexit lie threateningly ahead and the void in centre ground politics remains.