I know you have every right to disregard me on this topic given I said Michael Gove was a sure fire bet to be our next prime minister. I will only retort that I figured there would have to be a Brexiter in the final two and that the parliamentary Conservative party would realise that having Andrea Leadsom on the ticket instead of Gove would be sheer madness given the Euroscepticism of the members. I vastly overestimated the sanity/intelligence of Tory MPs and for that I whole heartedly apologise.
But I come back to my logic for why I thought Tory members would opt for Gove – a passionate Leave campaigner who would win over the membership, as they opted for a Leaver over a Remainer. The only way I can rationalise the choice of Leadsom in the final two is that the parliamentary wing of the Conservative Party figured they wanted May to win for stability reasons, so they thought putting Leadsom up against her would ensure that taking place. Or perhaps they just really hated Gove that much. There has been on display, in first fortnight of post-Brexit mania, a very strange mode of thinking swirling around Tory MPs: what a shit Gove was for stabbing Boris in the back – but thank Christ he did because BoJo would have been a disaster as PM. There is such an obvious paradox at the heart of that sentiment, I don’t feel the need to spell it out.
Now we find ourselves in a situation in which the parliamentary Conservative Party may have just committed suicide off the back of that extremely flawed logic. Andrea Leadsom, should she win, could easily trump every goer in the “worst prime minister of Great Britain of all time” sweepstakes by a canter – in fact, if I was David Cameron I would be praying for Leadsom to win. She is about the only thing that could redeem his legacy. Instead of being the bloke who gambled with the future of the nation and lost, she might help him out and let him instead enter the history books as the final Tory leader blessed with a basic level of sanity.
The Left is nowhere near prepared enough for how shockingly Leadsom may be about to combine incompetence and inability with hard right viewpoints whose rhetoric will be built around how people with competence and ability should be allowed to get on in life. It could dovetail nicely with a Donald Trump presidency. What an age we live in.
We’ve seen the first example of Trumpism from Leadsom this morning with her reaction to the Times article. “Gutter journalism” was how she responded on Twitter to a headline in which Leadsom claimed that motherhood would make her a superior PM to May. She dared the Times to release the transcript of the interview; when the newspaper did, she dared it to release he audio; they have and now she has nowhere to go next with this rant. In post-truth politics, however, I suspect none of this will hurt her standing with the Tory electorate who could make her the leader of the country in two months time.
what a shit Gove was for stabbing Boris in the back – but thank Christ he did because BoJo would have been a disaster as PM. There is such an obvious paradox at the heart of that sentiment, I don’t feel the need to spell it out
It’s not that unusual. Something unpleasant and brutal must be done; that it had to be done doesn’t change the fact that it was unpleasant and brutal.
The necessity of the crime does not negate the guilt of it. Only a moral consequentialist could think otherwise.
The same thing happened with Thatcher: everyone agreed she had to be removed, but the person who wielded the knife was never going to be rewarded with the crown.
With regards Leadsom, one good thing is that if she is elected, and is a disaster, it is pretty simple for the Conservative MPs to get rid of her: about 50 letters to the 1922 committee, a no-confidence vote, then a leadership contest in which (the rules are clear) she cannot stand.
She can’t cling on like Jeremy: she won’t go to the public a second time, and there is no need to agree on a single anti-Leadsom candidate, the things which have scuppered the Labour coup (plus, Tories are in general much less squeamish about decapitation).
If she is made PM she will be regarded by the Parliamentary party as being on probation, and if she doesn’t show a lot more competence than she has so far in her campaign she’ll be out within nine months, I reckon.
I have wondered if Gove did both himself and Boris a massive favour by getting them both out of the race.
Luckily with Tory rules she can be no confidenced’ ASAP within months if not days and be deposed.
Warren and C: Oh, and having a new PM without a general election mandate or clear parliamentary support no-confidenced by their MPs in the middle of a delicate unprecedented negotiation process would be no trouble for us all to cope with?
If 2016 turned into the Three Premier Year the UK would turn into a laughing stock.
having a new PM without a general election mandate or clear parliamentary support no-confidenced by their MPs in the middle of a delicate unprecedented negotiation process would be no trouble for us all to cope with?
It would clearly be less than ideal; but it would be a good deal better than having a PM who was manifestly not up to the job clinging on because the rules made them impossible to remove, which is the current situation with the leader of the opposition.
If 2016 turned into the Three Premier Year the UK would turn into a laughing stock
I would expect that if Leadsom is elected, the government will make an effort to work with her; she would be given a chance to prove that, all evidence from her campaign to the contrary, she was up to the job. You never know, she might turn out to be brilliant once she’s actually in the job. Stranger things have happened. Stranger things have happened this year, in fact.
Assuming she does not suddenly sprout superb Prime Ministerial skills, a challenge would not come until spring at the earliest, so 2017 rather than 2016.
I think economy needs May in the short / medium term, to find a pragmatic Brexit fudge, whereby all sides save face and we can get on with our lives. Politically, personally, I’d like to see the emergence of a new Centrist party, taking top talent from Con and Lab (maybe the odd Lib). To this end, a Leadsom win would be best. One point to note: there are very many pissed- off regular Tory voters who’ll be v reluctant to support Blue again…ever, after this debacle.
So that’s that then.