In Tory leadership races the assassin rarely becomes the replacement
There’s almost a story a day running on who’ll be TMay’s successor although she’s given no indication other than that she’s staying put at Number 10 and would probably like to remain to beyond Brexit and beyond.
But the PM’s personal authority was badly dented by the shock outcome to GE17 and, of course, her parliamentary position is neither strong nor stable. Her party, of course, has been riven with divisions on Europe for decades and arguably it brought the three previous CON PM’s down.
As in the previous thread Andrea Leadsom has hinted strongly in the Commons that she’s considering running again and, of course, Davis, Hammond and BoJo also have a strong interest.
The surprise in the betting in recent days has been the interest in Jacob Rees Mogg who earlier in the week became the second favourite behind David Davis. His price slipped back after making it clear that he wasn’t interested.
The real problem for the party is that there are no obvious alternatives to May and all the potential replacements have big question marks over them. Who would dare to make the first move against TMay? We all know how it was John Major who picked up the prize in 1990 after Mrs. T was ousted not Michael Heseltine.
The more I have watched him the more convinced I am that the best choice for the party would be the current First Minister, the articulate and intelligent Damian Green, who was relatively unknown until a month or so ago and has a lot of John Major about him.
A friend who was active in the Oxford University Tories in the late 1970s tells me that Green and May were the dominant figures of his era and that the former was always seen as the one most likely to succeed. I’m on at 70/1.