Hello my name is David Ronson and this is Talking Politics. I have got Helen with me and we are going to try and make sense of where things are not just in Britain but with many of the things we've been talking about this year.

And at the end I'm going to answer some of the interesting comments I've had about the idea of children getting the vote.

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So it is just me and Helen today. Helen has dragged herself off her sick bed to be here. We often feel that we have to say this is Wednesday morning.

Today that is a particularly important thing to note because we discovered a couple of hours ago that there's going to be a leadership contest to see if Theresa May can carry on as Prime Minister and we won't know the result until this evening and this podcast goes out tomorrow morning.

So you will know something that we don't know. We'll record a little bit extra tonight with some thoughts probably just from me about the final result.

But I think there's probably quite a lot we can talk about without knowing exactly what's going to happen. I think Helen and I both suspect that Theresa May will win this vote though what counts as a win is an open question.

Before it was clear that it was going to happen and I was thinking this morning about some of the things we're going to talk about.

One basic question is how many cards she's got less to play. One of them was a leadership contest that she wins.

Helen do you think I mean if you look at the possibilities facing her if she carries on as Prime Minister even just if it's for another couple of months.

What she got left in her political arsenal. I mean I think there's one thing she's still going for her which I'll come on to in a second.

Do you think there's anything left?

I think there's just got some potential for getting something from the European Union. It might be symbolic but it could be importantly symbolic in the sense of something that suggests that there are good reasons to think that the backstop won't be necessary.

I think it won't be enough to appease the E.R.G. but I think it will calm down some of those people who have defected away from her in the last 10 days or so.

Because it did look like things were going a bit more in her favor in the parliamentary party. The last 10 days they seem to have swung back against her.

I think the other thing she's probably got going for her is that she could assume that she does win tonight but there was a significant vote against her say that she will leave once Britain's left the European Union.

She kind of dedicates herself simply to the question of getting Britain out of the European Union and leaves up for the future.

The question of who amongst the Conservative Party is going to be the leader that negotiates the trade agreement thereafter or tries to negotiate the trade agreement thereafter.

So one thing that has changed even just today is that it looked like the crucial meeting was going to be in Ireland if she was going to get anything meaningful, not least because the Europeans have been saying that from their point of view what they're doing is defending the Irish position on this.

She's now not travelling to Dublin, she's got to survive the next 12 hours.

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