It’s not about who the PM is, but what’s the plan
Whoever the next leader is, the Tories need to be the party of social mobility and popular capitalism for Britain's sake
THE Referendum wrecking ball continues to swing through Westminster.
Already, David Cameron, Boris Johnson and George Osborne have been hammered by it — and others are in its path.
That Cameron and Osborne would be shattered by a Referendum defeat was, perhaps, predictable.
But few would have expected victory to end Boris’s ambitions or, at least, not so quickly.
The problems started last Saturday. Rather than shaping events, the Brexiteers went to ground. “It was in those hours that things became set in clay,” admits one Boris backer.
By the end of Saturday Brexit appeared to be something to be worried about, rather than hopeful about.
“Michael and Boris were exhausted. They wanted to recuperate. But because the Government wasn’t on the side of Leave, there was no one to talk about the opportunities,” admits one figure intimately involved in the Leave campaign.
On Sunday, Boris and Gove considered making a joint appearance to try to reassure the markets and the country.
But they decided against it, again leaving a vacuum that their and Brexit’s opponents filled.
Boris and Gove had forged a bond in the Referendum campaign.
But less than a week later it had dissolved completely. We can dismiss the idea that this was some long-standing plot.
If it was, Gove and his allies would have to be the greatest poker players in history.
Indeed, the one thing both sides agree on is that Gove’s job was not the issue.
The deal made in a Saturday night phone call for Gove to be Chancellor and lead the Brexit negotiation stood.
One close observer thinks that the presence of Lynton Crosby, the Australian strategist who masterminded Boris’s London mayoral victories and the Tory triumph in 2015, was the cause.
This observer points out that Crosby had been instrumental in Gove’s sacking as Education Secretary.
Gove would find the idea of operating within a Crosby government unappealing.
Those close to Gove deny this.
“Michael was delighted when Lynton came on board because he thought that might sort out Boris. But it didn’t.”
Instead, they argue that the problem was that Boris became ever more bumbling.
They claim he kept forgetting to call MPs and couldn’t remember what he had said to who.
Unforced errors kept being made, while the speech, the most important of Boris’s life, kept failing to progress.
When Tory MP and former Boris backer Nick Boles left Boris’s house at midnight on Wednesday, the speech was still not done, despite the launch being scheduled for the next morning.
Boris’s failure to sort out the Andrea Leadsom deal, as revealed in The Sun yesterday, was another cause of frustration.
Gove and his closest allies decided that they couldn’t vote for Boris to be PM, and so couldn’t ask others to do what they wouldn’t do themselves.
At the moment, Gove is struggling to get past Tory MPs’ rage at the drama of it all. But they hope that a two-hour Q&A session on Monday afternoon, to which all Tory MPs have been invited, could clear the air a bit.
Leadsom is now running herself. If she can be the first among the Brexiteers on Tuesday, she has a real chance of making the final two.
Theresa May, though, is now the strong favourite. Her low-key style is a soothing balm for a Tory party suffering from toxic shock because of the sheer amount of poison injected into its bloodstream in the past fortnight.
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She also benefits from the deliberately low profile she kept in the EU Referendum.
“Theresa comes to this pristine but Boris was too bloodied from the battlefield,” laments one of those who was on Boris’s team.
But the identity of the next PM matters less than the agenda they pursue.
Michael Gove has set out a bold and ambitious path for the country.
The response to Brexit should be to be more radical, not less.
A Gove/May debate on this question would be good for the Tory party, and the country.
Whoever is leader, the Tories need to be the party of social mobility and popular capitalism, unafraid to take on the vested interests that still hold too many back.
— James Forsyth is political editor of The Spectator
Seconds out in PM contest
WE could have a new Prime Minister by this time next week.
Currently the new Tory leader is not meant to be announced until September 9.
But I can reveal there are discussions under way to short-circuit this process.
Influential Tory MPs are already canvassing support for a plan by which whoever comes second in the final parliamentary round and is sent out to the members’ ballot in the country would withdraw.
This would pave the way for a new PM to take office immediately.
Tory MPs who back the idea believe this would provide stability at this uncertain time and enable Britain to start dealing with the Brexit challenges it faces at home and abroad.
I am told that “unbelievable pressure” will be placed on whoever comes second to drop out.
There is a view that it would be easier for a Remainer to drop out than an Outer – if there was an Outer on the ballot, the membership would be more likely to want a say.
One Tory MP who wants Theresa May to be PM tells me he is considering voting tactically to ensure that the Remainer Stephen Crabb is the other name on the ballot to make a speedy transition a certainty.
If Crabb came second, “He might have no choice but to drop out,” says one senior Tory backbencher.
Another way May could ensure a coronation would be to do so well in the first round – to secure 200-plus votes – that the pressure on everyone else to quit becomes overwhelming.
Those who want a coronation not a contest argue that it will be relatively easy for May to unite the party.
Both Outers and Inners have had their pound of flesh, with the champions of both causes – Cameron and Boris – gone.
But there is a danger of a sense of illegitimacy attaching to the result if the only people who get to vote are Tory MPs.
The silver lining
CONSERVATIVE MPs are quick to point out that if Theresa May wins, the political leadership of the West could be mostly female by next year.
“You could have Hillary (Clinton), Angela (Merkel) and Theresa running the world between them. Think about what a message that would send out!” one tells me.
If May does become PM, she will arrive in Brussels as pretty much a “clean skin”. She isn’t regarded as responsible for either the decision to hold the Referendum or the result.
Her backers argue this should mean she will start with more goodwill in negotiations than any other potential PM.
Labour is about to tear itself in two
A LABOUR split is now inevitable.
What the two sides are really fighting over is who gets to keep the party name – which is why the hard Left is determined to keep Corbyn in place and keep possession of the party.
Why does the name matter so much?
Because as many as one in five voters simply votes Labour.
If the anti-Corbynites have to form their own party, they will have an uphill struggle to become a political force. It will take them a generation to be serious contenders for power.
But if they can retake the Labour Party, the recovery could be far quicker than that.