Comments on: Tories

By: Chris Brooke

Chris Brooke — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 11:32:39 +0000

I don’t think Hunt is a credible leadership challenger: he’s too discredited after Leveson. He’s just trying to secure some kind of political future for himself, after Cameron, knowing that the only reason he isn’t out on his ear right now is that Cameron is terrible at sacking people.

By: Hal Berstram

Hal Berstram — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 11:18:50 +0000

I’m coming late to the party here Chris, but this was such an interesting post that I think it’s worth a comment even 9 days after you posted.

I agree that what we have now is Johnson, Gove and Hunt all setting out their stalls for a post-2015 leadership election. Johnson has the most free hand because he can’t be sacked by Cameron for disloyalty, although he has in fact decided for the moment that loyalty is the best form of disloyalty, if you see what I mean. Boris’s best shot at the leadership is a big Tory defeat after which he would be turned to as the big saviour. He will find it tougher if the Tories only lose narrowly, or in a hung parliament.

Mickey Gove is setting himself up as the credible alternative to Liam Fox on the right wing. The media are (at the moment) painting him as a successful education reformer – how long that can last, I don’t know. He stands a good chance in the event of a close Tory defeat.

Hunt is more telegenic than Gove but perhaps also, therefore, might suffer from being too similar to Cameron in general demeanour. He also faces the possible banana skin of the continuing fall-out from Leveson. I think he’s a good outside bet, but an outside bet for post-2015 leader nonetheless.

Interestingly, none of the 2010 intake have yet broken through into front-line politics in the same way that Cameron did in the 2001-05 parliament. It seems unlikely that anyone from the 2010 intake will be well enough established to fight credibly for the leadership by 2015 but there are still over 2 years to go and that could be a rash assessment.

The other matter of interest is: what happens if the Tories almost make it, but not quite? e.g. a hung parliament and a Lib-Lab coalition or Labour minority govt. Cameron is an arrogant SOB and he will try to cling on as long as he can, I’m sure. He won’t go quietly unless he really has to. Could get messy out there…

By: dsquared

dsquared — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 07:14:42 +0000

Surely they are all three of them best identified in terms of the American jobs they want after all this ghastly business of pretending to work in middle-management on a rainy shithole six hours from Manhattan is over. Johnson has the “special correspondent on the Daily Show” angle, Gove has made his pitch for the Shirley Williams job at Harvard, and so Hunt has realised he needs to pitch for the John Derbyshire role at Heritage.

By: David Blake

David Blake — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 12:24:26 +0000

Surely it’s much simpler than you say. There are so many things involving health that he doesn’t want to talk about, like privatising the health service, cutting budgets and generally acting like toe-rags. A cheap shot like this must seem like nice distraction.