Today’s choice is between a woman who has grasped the scale and sweep of Brexit, and a man who has spent his entire career cuddling up to Britain’s enemies.
The Conservative Party has long been the natural home of libertarians and classical liberals. That relationship might be about to get less comfortable.
Theresa May’s philosophy has no cadre of committed supporters amongst the membership, MPs, or think tanks. It may thus prove short-lived.
Willingness to leave the EU with no deal, but to pay for specific programmes, is popular. Intervention in businesses and the economy is not.
Oh, and Timothy and Hill should be moved on from being co-Chiefs of Staff – the former to head up policy, the latter press.
The Union rests on a bedrock of overwhelming economic logic, but it should be so much more. Let the Prime Minister channel Joe Chamberlain.
Plus: UKIP abandons the field against Remain Tories. A bike-riding Minister isn’t canvassing. And: Michael Crick should apologise.
Nick Timothy is from this Birmingham seat, which could go blue if anyone can be bothered to vote.
The selections in the two Tory-held seats to date have both been won by women; and there is at least one woman on the shortlist of every such seat yet to select.
The former fear that it will revive what they believe are business-unfriendly ideas about foreign takeovers and workers on boards.
But that doesn’t mean that she can afford to try to run this election on a timid manifesto. This remains the party’s best chance to win a mandate for tough choices.
That’s the head of the Downing Street Policy Unit, the Chair of May’s Policy Board, the most important Minister you’ve never heard of…and our former columnist.
His great achievement two years ago was to sever the head off the Liberal Democrat snake – and most of the body too. Now he must defang it again.
In her belief in “the good that government can do”, she is quite unique in terms of UK political post-war history.
Gender, race and sexuality dominated the early phases of Tory modernisation. The Prime Minister is now scaling the most challenging peak: class.