Political Betting has a piece on the next Tory leader.
I think, though, we may be looking at the wrong key parameter for what will determine the next Conservative leader. In a case where a political leader is seen as a failure and / or tainted, the reaction tends to produce a leader who is seen as the opposite (Corbyn after Miliband springs to mind, Thatcher after Heath etc)...
...I think most Conservative MPs and, less so, members get that. There is grudging admiration for her tenacity but a realisation that it is the lack of human empathy that has caused many of the problems we are seeing now...
...That means that the key lesson that Conservative MPs take from May’s Premiership is not they need a committed Brexiteer or, conversely, a Remainer to stop the Brexit faction but that the next leader should be someone who does human: is comfortable in their own skin, is not necessarily perfect but who can actually connect with what ordinary people are thinking and whom people would like – in effect, someone with whom they would like to go down the pub for a pint (and, no, I am not thinking Farage)...
...Who does that leave (pardon the pun)? I think Boris Johnson, for all his faults, comes out well.
The whole piece is worth a read. The Tories probably do need to regain some perception of humanity after Theresa May's disastrously mechanical stint but most of the Tory faces we see are not strong on humanity.
2 comments:
We could do worse. It's a matter of some regret that we probably couldn't do very much better, but we certainly could do a lot worse.
Sam - I agree, we could do a lot worse.
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