If there was a CON leadership contest tomorrow my money would go on Javid and Hunt
Theresa’s travails on Brexit over the past week have made it that bit less possible that she’ll survive as leader and PM to Brexit and beyond. I thought John Rentoul summed this up right in the Indy:
“Until this week, I assumed May would be the prime minister who took us out of the EU in March. Her strategy of delay, procrastination and attrition isn’t pretty, and risks cutting the Brexit deadline fine, but it seemed to be working. This week, it didn’t. ..“
Rentoul is talking up the prospects of the new HomeSec, Sajid Javid:
“..This week Javid lifted the cap on immigration for NHS doctors and nurses, and .. he helped to change government policy to allow a boy in Northern Ireland to import cannabis oil to treat a life-threatening condition. May’s distraction by Brexit means he can make popular policy changes and take the credit for them.
He has only been at the Home Office for six weeks and already he has ended the “hostile environment” policy on illegal immigration that gave us the Windrush scandal, made his peace with the Police Federation, the toughest trade union after the British Medical Association, and promised to deliver a law against upskirting after a maverick Tory MP blocked it.”
Michael Gove is the current betting favourite, see the chart above, and, of course, there is still Rees-Mogg who has fallen out of favour with punters of late. I think that the former long-term favourite, Johnson, is now out of it and he no longer appears to be the Tory who can reach groups of voters that other leading figures couldn’t. His tenure at the Foreign Office hasn’t helped.
Then there is the HealthSec, Hunt, who has been in the cabinet without break right from the formation of the coalition in May 2010. He’s a survivor and could be the safe pair of hands that the party turns to.
Of course everything in CON contests depends on first being able to make one of the top two places in the voting amongst party MPs for it only their names that go forward to the membership.