The battle between allies of Philip Hammond, Boris Johnson and David Davis is so serious that it has spilled from arguments around the cabinet table to open warfare at Westminster summer garden parties.

Senior Tories trying to downplay the splits as the product of “too much warm prosecco” are insulting the intelligence of voters. It is a fight for the future of the Conservative leadership and the shape of Brexit, with Theresa May powerless to reassert discipline following her election disaster.

Those around Hammond believe he is the target of negative briefing from colleagues because he is trying to stop a hard Brexit and maintain fiscal discipline. His opponents believe he is an establishment figure prepared to ignore the results of the EU referendum and the election in an effort to keep the status quo.

There is certainly an attempt to embarrass him under way: two stories emerged over the weekend revealing that he had claimed public sector workers were overpaid and suggested that train driving was easy enough to be done by women.

One senior Tory blamed both Michael Gove, the environment secretary, and Johnson for being involved in some of the briefing against Hammond, saying they were “so obsessed with a hard Brexit that they’re prepared to run the economy off a cliff and they don’t like the fact that Philip is pointing out that we will deservedly lose the next election if we do that”.



But Hammond has multiple enemies – with some Tories trying to undermine him motivated primarily by a desire to safeguard Brexit and some viewing him as a rival for the keys to No 10.

Conservative MPs are suspicious that Johnson and Davis are hungry for the top job, while painting themselves as guardians of the vote to leave the EU.

Stories are circulating Westminster of bad blood between the two, with the Sunday Times describing an encounter at the Spectator summer party where they were behaving “like a pair of rutting stags”. Davis was described as goading Johnson over his “failure” to keep his sister Rachel from defecting to the Liberal Democrats. And their allies reportedly ended up threatening to kick each other in the balls if they did not stop briefing against each other.

Other less personally ambitious Brexiters believe their cause is better served by keeping May in No 10, with one telling the Telegraph: “What’s really going on is that the establishment, the Treasury, is trying to ---- it up. They want to frustrate Brexit. This is a critical moment. That’s why we have to keep Theresa there. Otherwise the whole thing will fall apart.”

Davis and Johnson are the two big beasts making the most noise but there is a string of other cabinet ministers who might fancy their chances at the top job including Sajid Javid, Priti Patel, Jeremy Hunt, Justine Greening, Amber Rudd and Andrea Leadsom. A second tier of junior ministers and third tier of ambitious backbenchers would probably rather wait a while to boost their profiles before the inevitable Tory leadership contest gets under way.



The question is now whether this febrile atmosphere of briefing and counter-briefing is a phoney war over the Tory leadership or whether anyone is gearing up for a real challenge.

Allies of Davis are known to be collecting names of supporters in case there is a contest but many Conservative MPs are desperate to avoid another election that Jeremy Corbyn could win.

Others are disgusted by the petty squabbles and Machiavellian plotting that they know reflects badly on the party as a whole, smoothing the path even more for a Labour victory.

But May is so weakened that she can hardly afford to sack Johnson, Davis, Hammond, or any of the others that would potentially trigger a challenge. So she is left reliant on feeble pleas for unity from Damian Green, her new first secretary of state, and a hope that that Conservative MPs will cling to her leadership for fear of something worse.