In the spirit of cross-party cooperation ...

.. I offer the following to Mts May's successor, who, by all accounts, cannot be far away:

Draft speech for Theresa May’s successor

Thank you for your support and the trust you have invested in me in these difficult times.

I should like first of all to pay tribute to my predecessor. Even her worst enemies would acknowledge Theresa’s single-mindedness, determination and loyalty to our party. It is not her fault that we failed to reach a mutually satisfying withdrawal agreement with the European Union. If Theresa could not achieve Brexit while keeping our party together, nobody could. Rather, the inherent contradictions in the Brexit process defeated us all.

We must admit that there was only a narrow margin of victory in the 2016 referendum. If it had been part of a scientific experiment, the result would have been set aside as not statistically significant. Even within the ranks of the winning side in that referendum, there were differing views on what sort of withdrawal was required.

Calling a general election in 2017 was a justifiable attempt to strengthen our majority in parliament and a consistent approach to our negotiations with Brussels. As it turned out, the election only confirmed what the referendum had already shown: the divisions within our country.

If an impasse is reached on a committee, a council or even in our deliberations in the Mother of Parliaments, it is down to the chair, the man or woman in charge, to make a casting vote. The convention is that he or she opts for the status quo ante. This great party of ours is the largest in parliament and all the indications are that it would remain so if there were an election tomorrow. It is up to us to take charge of the situation, to make a judgement to break the deadlock. In our present situation, the status quo is to remain in the European Union. Accordingly, as soon as I have kissed hands with Her Majesty, I shall write to the President of the Council indicating our wish to withdraw the application to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.

We must apologise for the promises made by our leadership at the time of the referendum, along with their ludicrous prognostications of doom.

The referendum is a concept which has not been part of our tradition of parliamentary government and has never been regarded as binding in England. We Conservatives must renounce the use of the referendum as a foreign import, the tool of Napoleon and Hitler, and return to traditional firm government. But we must not ignore the clear messages which the electorate has sent us.

We have been lax in stopping benefit tourism from Europe, and in policing the breaches of the living wage legislation. Unscrupulous businesses have taken advantage of ignorant immigrants from the rest of the EU and of illegal immigrants from elsewhere to push down wages. We will put a stop to all that. At the same time, we will rid this country of the spivs and speculators who, abetted by the New Labour government, nearly brought this country to its knees in 2008.

We will redouble our efforts to improve the Common Agriculture Policy so that working farmers have priority over those who merely own rural land. We will also remove the red tape which has been so burdensome. Farmers in Europe do not have to struggle with the paperwork and unnecessary regulation which have resulted from the “gold-plating” of EU directives, and we will strip all that away, While mindful of the need to preserve fish stocks, we will seek to restore the rights of our fishermen under the Common Fisheries Policy and rein back the free-for-all in the North Sea.

In 1940 we re-engaged with Europe to defeat Nazism and Fascism, with their repugnant credo of anti-Semitism. In 2019 we must do so again. We have rightly put pressure on Her Majesty’s official opposition to rid itself of the anti-Semites in its midst, but we cannot ignore the growing anti-Semitism in the ruling parties on the Eastern fringes of the European Union. We must add our weight to measures to bring those nations back into the civilised world. We cannot let this canker grow unchecked as we did in the 1930s.

So with Brexit behind us and releasing the resources in money and civil service manpower which the process has sucked up over the last three years, we can concentrate on the path Mrs May laid out for us in her inaugural Downing Street speech, taking the pressure off the “just managing”, stamping out violent crime and drug misuse, and combating terrorism.

I commend this statement to the party.