Iain Dale is Presenter of LBC Drive, Managing Director of Biteback Publications, a columnist and broadcaster and a former Conservative Parliamentary candidate.
I was at a party on Wednesday night celebrating the 60th birthday of a Conservative politician. Oh alright then – it was Andrew Mitchell. It was quite a do. I was amused to be approached at one point by a veteran of David Davis’s leadership campaign of 2005 who was looking rather pleased with himself. “Why so happy?” I asked. “Oh, nothing really, it’s just so nice to see Nick Boles get his comeuppance after all these years.”
I presumed he was talking about the texts that Boles sent to Tory MPs in a rather desperate attempt to get Michael Gove onto the ballot – but I couldn’t really work out why this MP thought it was a “comeuppance”. “Don’t you remember?” he asked. “It was Boles who co-ordinated the spinning effort against David Davis’s conference speech in Blackpool?”
I do remember it, but hadn’t cottoned on at the time. I remember seeing him with some journalists after the speech, but it hadn’t occurred to me just what was being said. I do, however, remember how the Westminster lobby slated what most people initially regarded as a perfectly acceptable speech, if not a spectacular one. Indeed, since then, several lobby journalists have spoken to me about it, and admitted they all behaved like sheep.
I didn’t carp about it then, and I don’t know. It was a brilliant bit of spinning by the Cameron team and it’s hardly their fault if the political lobby acted as they did. It wasn’t the first time and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.
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Andrea Leadsom has come under scrutiny like no other leadership candidate. Clearly, some are afraid of her and her agenda. Some of the media commentary has been astonishing. In many ways, she has done well to survive it. The worst that she has been accused of is making some slightly injudicious comments on an old blog, written long before she became an MP, and of slightly embellishing her CV. Jesus – it’s just as well she had never betrayed her best political friend, eh?
By contrast, the media has paid very little attention to anything in Theresa May’s past, and concentrated on printing a series of glowing profiles, ignoring any failures in her political career. Now there’s a reason for that. So far as I can see, with May what you see is what you get. There’s no side to her – there’s no real failure in her political career. Even in six years as Home Secretary, you can’t really put your finger on any major failure of policy.
Of course, not everything has gone to plan but, compared to her predecessors in that office, everything has run comparatively smoothly. And that is why she’s considered a safe pair of hands. Leadsom’s main problem is that this leadership election will not result in the winner becoming the Leader of the Opposition, with a couple of years to play herself in, but immediately becoming prime minister.
Both candidates would be learning on the job to a certain extent, but even her most diehard fan would have to admit that electing Leadsom would be a more of a risk than electing May – and that is the primary reason why May was so far ahead in the Parliamentary voting.
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Tony Blair’s press conference on Wednesday, in response to the release of the Chilcot Report, was quite something. It lasted two hours. He answered every question that journalists wanted to ask, until they were exhausted.
It was a typical Blair tour de force. The hand gestures. The furrowed brow. The subliminal message of “I want you to like me” was permanently present. His voice had become almost childlike – imploring. He sounded almost in tears as he croaked away. His hair has turned a very strange colour. Brown on top, almost totally grey at the sides.
But, I tell you what: I still believe that had he been leader of the Labour Party at the last election, they could well have won. The Westminster bubble totally misjudges public opinion on Blair. They’ve bought into this narrative that Jeremy Corbyn has been spinning: that he is public enemy number one. That may be the case in the liberal salons of Islington. Out there in the country, he’s still seen as a towering figure.
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On what planet do Labour MPs think Angela Eagle is the best person to challenge Jeremy Corbyn? I like her. She’s a transparently nice woman, but a party leader? Tough enough to survive three months of abuse from Momentum? I doubt it very much.
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The Conservative MP James Gray, a supporter of Leadsom, described her to one of my colleagues as “a great girl.” She is 53.
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So as May and Leadsom embark on their two month tour of the country to drum up support from party members, political journalists are no doubt going to begin imagining what a May Government would look like. Few of them expect anything other than a May victory.
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Well, here are some ideas.
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The two biggest calls May is going to have to make is what to do about George Osborne and Michael Gove. They may decide that they don’t wish to serve under her, but if they do she’s got two big decisions to make.
Osborne surely wouldn’t accept anything less than Chancellor or Foreign Secretary, but can a Remainer really hold either of those posts if the Prime Minister is a Remainer too?
If Gove is to stay in the Cabinet, I suggest continuing his innovative prison reforms should be the priority, and that he should stay at Justice, but I rather fear that May might well think that she can do without his talents at all.
This would be a big call on her part, and leave a powerful enemy languishing on the back benches, but it’s difficult to see them working well together given their past history. As I say, a big call.
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In any other circumstances I’d also be suggesting that David Cameron becomes Foreign Secretary, just as Sir Alec Douglas Home did in 1970 under Ted Heath. He’d be very good at the job, but in the current circumstances I doubt whether a) he’d want to stay in someone else’s Cabinet and b) whether Brexiters would be able to stomach it.