Theresa May’s lucky to have avoided the scrutiny that there’d have been with a prolonged membership ballot
The decision of Andrea Leadsom to pull out of the race last Monday is making May’s initial period a whole lot easier. Instead of the 8 weeks long slog of hustings meetings, probing interviews and TV debates the new PM has managed to avoid the searching questions on policy that would have made life considerably harder when entering Number 10.
Just remember the commitment on the Tories in Brussels moving to a different grouping that Cameron made in the 2005 contest when he was trying to assuage the Euroscepetic elements of the Tory membership.That caused him both for years afterwards.
If there been a full membership election there’d have been probing TV interviews on issues like her “Brexit mean Brexit” assertions which could have led to commitments that would make her task harder once in office. This is a profile of the CON membership bases that would have made the decision.
Some @ESRCPtyMembers data on Tory grassroots in @TheSun today https://t.co/Z8wSYJ22Po pic.twitter.com/uPflrpyiHH
— Tim Bale (@ProfTimBale) July 9, 2016
As it is she has started with a pretty clean slate and like the first woman Tory PM she’s facing an opposition leader whose ratings are on par with Michael Foot and the possibility of Labour splitting.
This has been a very good week for Mrs. May.