cromwell wrote:One thing I have noticed about the Conservative leadership election is that they let MP's whittle the contenders down until there are just two, at which point the members are graciously allowed to join in.
This seems to have led (Johnson apart) to a succession of leaders (Major, Cameron, May) who are very representative of the Parliamentary Conservative party, but much less representative of the ordinary Conservative member.
Only the cripplingly debilitating effect of May's loss of confidence of a minority government led to Johnson winning. In short almost nobody else wanted to take the job and not enough wanted Hunt to take on the job of getting us out of the EU finally.
This time the only viable candidates will, as you say, reflect the majority of the parliamentary party. And the majority of Conservative MP's are Remainers. A year from now a large chunk of the Tory party are going to be bemoaning the choice of leader and I'm going to laugh and laugh and laugh and if I get a chance on any forum I'm going to have my say. Which is their "loyalty" has bought them their situation.
Let's get facts straight. The party is hated by anyone who is not a core Tory and plenty of them too; the Red Wall seats are going anyway and barring a huge miracle, they're going down at the next GE. Whoever takes the reins next will not be a magician because whilst they want a new leader they don't want the leader to lead. They want the new leader to listen to them and do what they want. Only problem there is that there are at least 3 different factions in there at the moment and they all want very different things.
The next 3 years are going to be the circus of the century in Westminster and I thought I'd seen it all with May.
