Theresa May still hasn’t given a date for her departure. Who will evict her from Downing Street?

The men in grey suits finally came for Theresa May. They stayed for long enough to set off a feeding frenzy in Westminster. And then they went away again, leaving the Prime Minister still resident at 10 Downing Street.

The chairman of the 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady, read out a statement, the gist of which was that Mrs May and he would have another meeting. This would take place in the week of June 3, after Parliament had voted on the second reading of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, “to agree a timetable for the election of a new leader”.

The media got quite excited about this statement, the wording of which had presumably taken up much of the meeting. It was declared to be a victory for the suits. Others were not so sure. They noted that Mrs May had once again put off naming a date for her own departure. And the longer that departure is postponed, the less certain is the succession.

The ambiguity of the outcome of what had been billed as a showdown took the wind out of Boris Johnson’s announcement that he had “a boundless appetite to try to get [Brexit] right”. Nobody has ever doubted the colossal size of the former Foreign Secretary’s various appetites. That includes his appetite for the highest office, for which he has been eager since earliest childhood, when he longed to be “world king”.

Given that, as he acknowledged, there is still no vacancy, however, his declaration — at the British Insurance Brokers’ Association conference in Manchester, an event closed to the press — came across as impulsive, even premature. Team Boris refused to say how much he was being paid by the insurance brokers, but a recent speaking engagement in India netted him £122,899. It subsequently emerged that Johnson had omitted to inform his own aides, who would surely have advised him to wait for a day when he, rather than the person he wishes to replace, was dominating the news.  The impression was given, rightly or wrongly, that the putative favourite might not have put behind him the chaos that surrounded his last leadership bid. The big gun had gone off at half-cock.

Up and down the country, meanwhile, a peasants’ revolt was brewing. Unnoticed by the lobby journalists, who seldom leave their Westminster microclimate except to follow politicians around, ordinary Tories have been voting on whether to tell their chairmen to sack the party leader. The local associations are preparing for an extraordinary general meeting of the National Conservative Convention on June 15.

It will indeed be extraordinary if, as expected, the delegates vote to ask Mrs May to go. Such a vote has never happened before. Tory leaders have always counted on the loyalty of their activists. But the worm, it seems, has turned. And there will be no going back. Once a leader has been ousted by the rank and file, her successors will in future be more directly accountable to them than ever before. The 1922 Committee may monopolise the attention of the media, but the knights of the shires have missed their chance. Power is shifting to the foot-soldiers. Why should they ever give it back to the backbenchers?

The scene is set for a full-scale dispute over a certain Downing Street property. The Prime Minister is the tenant, who is racking up rent arrears (failure to deliver Brexit) but refuses to vacate the premises, despite repeated requests by the landlord. (That’s us, the electorate.) We have invoked the tenancy agreement, which stipulates that the guarantor (the Tory party) is supposed to take responsibility. While they carry on their own private dispute, the landlord is calling in the bailiff. (That’s Nigel Farage.) He is due to remove the furniture next week. The awful scene after the European elections may resemble Channel 5’s excruciating reality TV programme: Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away. Of course, possession is nine tenths of the law — and Mrs May is still in residence. Will she have to be evicted? Will there be blood on the carpet? One thing’s for sure: nobody in Westminster has a clue.