... We may assume that powerful Conservative figures wanted Boris Johnson gone, for historical as well as proximal reasons. Someone lofty may have spoken smoothly into the ear of his lieutenant, Michael Gove, to persuade him he was prime minister material and that he should desert. When he did and Johnson stepped aside, a so-called grandee, Michael Heseltine, was on hand to disembowel the corpse. Then, for his 15 minutes, Gove was before us, cross-gartered like foolish Malvolio, until another grandee, Kenneth Clarke, in concert with the Daily Mail, was ready to knife his guts. Two down in the summer of contempt.
Or it happened another way. We Kremlinologists can only guess at what’s being turned over in the clubs of St James or the farmhouses of Oxfordshire. But we do know that what all sides are calling
the greatest political crisis of our generation is a creature imagined into being by the Conservative party alone. It, not Ukip, offered the referendum; it fought it, it won as well as lost it. For such services, for the mayhem and poison that followed and are clouding the leadership contest,
we should now be watching it shredded by an effective, eloquent opposition. But by their silence Corbyn and his troubled, paranoid court have delivered us, in effect, and for the time being, into a one-party state, and not the Leninist version certain courtiers dream of.
Now you watch on helplessly as your prime minister is chosen. It is, of course, constitutionally correct that you have no say in the matter. But it’s hard to shake off that below-stairs feeling. We can do no more than gossip round the kitchen table. The butler has a theory, and so does the second chambermaid. Even “boots” knows all about tactical voting. Our first-naming paradoxically measures our distance from events. Is Boris biding his time, or is he truly finished?
What does it tell us about the party, post 2008, that Andrea, an ex-banker hostile to the minimum wage, could soon be prime minister? Was Theresa’s reticence during the referendum campaign astute and tactical? Or merely an expression of her character? Or is she the remainers’ mole? Can we believe that the chancellor isn’t plotting? We hear footsteps above our head – more comings and goings. But who?
You might cling to the butler’s mole theory even as you worry that your hopes are loosening your grip on reality:
the powerful faction that wanted to remain, and whispered flattery and enticements in Gove’s ear, has cleared the field of Johnson, the other side’s most powerful contender, and eased one of its own into place as PM. The exit negotiations begin and are inevitably protracted in a game with such stacked odds. Our European friends, watching their own backs, will not be offering kindly terms.
Only a fool would want to invoke the dread article too soon...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/09/country-political-crisis-tories-prime-minister
= new reply since forum marked as read
