Is there any hope?

And so we wait. After what surely no one can deny was a valiant effort the Prime Minister finally fell on her sword. On a human level it was a real tragedy. There was little doubt Mrs May felt the hand of history on her shoulder as she tried to deliver the will of the people, but that hand ultimately slipped to grip her neck and there are no prizes for coming second. She will go down as a failed Prime Minister and her efforts, although heroic, will soon be forgotten.

Now we are spoilt for choice – not that everyone will see it quite that way. As I write there are eight contenders for the Conservative leadership of varying experience and capability. Who knows, by the time you read this we may be into double figures. Some candidates are household names and have already been tested by high offices of state - think Messrs Johnson, Hunt and Gove. Others are less obviously qualified and certainly less well known – think Raab, McVey and Leadsom. Eventually there’ll be just two candidates for the just over a hundred and fifty thousand paid up Conservative party members to choose from. 

A couple of weeks back I suggested to the estimable James Landale, a Hampshire resident, current BBC Diplomatic Correspondent and one-time Deputy Political Editor, that we had seen “peak Boris”. He wasn’t so sure. Certainly, that view seems to be echoed by the latest media commentary. How can this be? After all, BoJo didn’t exactly cover himself in glory during his brief stint as Foreign Secretary. Winging it as usual, he managed to make matters worse for benighted Hampshire resident Nazanin Zighari-Ratcliffe who, then on the brink of release from jail in Iran, is still enjoying the dubious hospitality of the Mullahs’ penal system thanks to Boris’s injudicious remarks. John Sergeant, lately of Strictly but more significantly with a glittering career in political reporting behind him, has declared Boris to be “temperamentally unsuited to the office of Prime Minister” - condemnation indeed from someone who should know what good looks like.

So why is the smart money (and more importantly that of those having a flutter with the bookies) still on Boris? It goes like this. Conservative MPs, ever the architects of their own downfall, have ensured public opprobrium by sticking rigidly to entrenched positions, putting the needs of the country behind politicking. They know the electorate is saying, “a pox on all your houses”. These MPs also know that the General Election which must surely sooner or later follow the appointment of a new Prime Minister will be an opportunity for the electorate to cane them once again, just as they did in last week’s Euro Elections. I am sure many Tory voters backed Farage to send a clear message to Westminster MPs. At a general election those same voters may either not vote or vote for an alternative party. A cynic once remarked that the only job of an MP is to get re-elected and that principle is what will drive the Tory leadership election. Boris, his fellow MPs argue, is the only candidate who, with his doubtful celebrity and populist bluster, has a chance of pulling off electoral victory. 

They need to be careful. There are two maxims that govern General Elections. Firstly, oppositions never win elections (and the current incumbents look just as inchoate as the Conservatives) governments lose them. Secondly, it is swing voters, the perennially undecided, who will actually decide the outcome. Unless circumstances change the likely result of any election is another hung parliament. That will mean negotiation with other parties, probably with less clear views than the Democratic Unionist Party. Our elected dictatorship has made a Horlicks of its European negotiations. It’s hard to fathom how they’d do any better on the domestic front.

Is there any hope?