Great the Tory leadership playing pass the parcel with responsibility for this mess.
I still want to believe the UK will stay in the EU in the end albeit after some hard nosed negotiation and political maneuvering. But no Theresa May, we should revisit the EU question and yes we should have a general election as soon as possible.
It certainly looks quite a good time for a new PM to call a General Election, with the Labour party in such disarray. They might even get a working majority out of it, which they barely have, at the moment.
Calling a GE though while maybe looking attractive right now given what’s going on with Labour runs the risk of giving the opposition the option to run on the Remain platform by which time they might have gotten their act together. The Tories have a 12 seat majority right now and if you’re a Tory PM who believes in the Leave route then it’s safer to use the next few years to push this agenda through with your majority intact rather than risk the opposition tapping into the large section of the population who would prefer to remain in the EU and potentially turning the whole thing on its head. Theresa May has already indicated that she would have no intention to call a GE if made PM.
She has indeed, to my surprise (I don’t really find it easy to see that going down well with the 150,000-strong Conservative member electorate?).
I’m also rather surprised to see a “Remainer” being the favourite, though she certainly seems to have survived very well as Home Secretary (a position in which most don’t) and may perhaps be regarded as “a safe pair of hands”, I suppose. Her shoes don’t impress me, though.
She is the best leader material for the job.
Time and time again women’s leadership qualities are seen as inadequate or questionable…they are judged on appearance and presented as nurturing mothers or heartless b i t c h e s… What would be welcome would be a media stopping the mental somersaults when trying to find some incredible angle on a woman becoming president or prime minister: she has leadership, if only the media listens to what she has to say. She is the only candidate who has gravitas, who wastes no time laying out a vision, and does not involve herself in name calling and power squabbles. That is a sobre leader that the country needs in a time of crisis, regardless of gender.
Probably, out of those standing. Though Gove [I]could[/I] turn out well, perhaps? He’s just much more of an unknown quantity as a “leader” than Theresa May, I think. Theresa Villiers, who I think would be the best of the lot, won’t stand.
Theresa May has stood up very well to the Police Federation (among others), which I think speaks highly of her.
I agree.
Yes, indeed. I think this is right. (the only reason I’m sounding slightly reserved about this issue is that I have a pretty favourable opinion of Gove from his time in Education. It turned out badly for him, there, but I really felt he was trying to do the right things for the right reasons (and so did Diane Abbott!). Probably I have an idiosyncratic perspective on these issues, having been to high school in another country, but for 8 years(!) in universities over here I was surrounded by the products of British schools and I think the general high school education standards here are just [I]awful[/I] compared with those of most European countries. I probably sound snobbish and pretentious, now - sorry! :8: ).
On [I]This Week[/I], last night, Michael Portillo said he was [U]enormously[/U] relieved that Boris is no longer standing. 