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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » As she leaves for China TMay says she’s not a quitter and will
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » As she leaves for China TMay says she’s not a quitter and will lead party into GE2022
How's this going to go down with CON. MPs? She insists that she'll fight next election https://t.co/3BFYNssbe4
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I agree Mike. This might prove to be the final misjudgement.
But do enough Conservative MPs have the minerals?
If the outcome were the same in May, Richmond, Sutton, Kingston, Wandsworth, Westminster, Harrow, and Barnet would all be tight contests. Havering, Kensington, Hillingdon, Bromley, and Bexley would be safe Conservative. Everywhere else would be safe Labour. Indeed, Labour would win every seat in Haringey, Islington, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Newham, Barking and Dagenham, Lewisham, Lambeth and Southwark.
There is a difference between it being "understood" that something might happen and it being formal policy.
That calculation will change post-Brexit, when it becomes about who can best fight GE2022, but it's not a question for now.
If by some quirk of fate Brady does get 48 letters, and a leadership contest is triggered, I'd expect May to win it but with her own authority, and the UK's negotiating hand, weakened by it.
'I'M NOT A QUITTER' Theresa May hits back at mutinous Tories as she vows to stay on as Prime Minister until the ‘job is done’
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5464045/theresa-may-says-she-will-not-quit/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
A YouGov poll for WPI Strategy, a consultancy, found 69 per cent of people who voted for the Conservative think Mrs May should continue as prime minister, with 18 per cent saying that she should stand down and let someone else take over. The rest did not know.
Voters were not enthralled by the prospect of any alternative Tory leaders, with Boris Johnson the most divisive candidate.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/theresa-may-faces-down-backbench-critics-5k68c90v0
Speaking to reporters on her RAF Voyager flight to China at the start of a three-day trade mission, Mrs May said: “First and foremost I’m a servant of my country and my party. I’m not a quitter, and there is a long-term job to be done.”
The language consciously echoed her vow last year to fight the next election as Tory leader.
She knows she won't, but has to behave as if she is up for it.
More sloppy reporting.
....as the letters pour in.....
If it were possible to send letters to Brady to get rid of Hammond, I reckon he'd have 50% already, not 15%. There'll be a bunch of MPs now thinking, well let's stick in a letter - and have a twofer....
As IanB2 points out May has to be opaque, which she has been.
Only 18% of her own party’s voters want her to stand down now, so it’s all just media speculation - with a certain editor undoubtedly egging on the rest of them.
Mind you, it nearly worked for him.
Maybe then it's the ghost of Thatcher, who said she wanted to be PM until 1995 the week before she was toppled?
Or why look that far? Perhaps it's Blair.
Ah.....
https://twitter.com/NCPoliticsUK/status/958456855050838017
Quite a swing from level pegging:
Change: 46
Keep as is: 45
https://twitter.com/NCPoliticsUK/status/958480002546356224
And I never, ever thought I would type that.
But unless the 48 letters are reached soon, I think the flashpoint is the May elections. On current polling theywill be a bit meh, with Labour doing reasonably well but not much better than 4 years ago, when Miliband did reasonably well. If that's the outcome, I think he'll lead the party in the next GE.
https://twitter.com/NCPoliticsUK/status/958480002546356224
(PS do you mean 'she'll lead them'?)
https://twitter.com/NCPoliticsUK/status/958446561633161217
So 63% of Tory voters voted for them because they had the best leader (slightly ahead of Cameron) - and 69% of them want May to stay as leader. Hardly backs up the Times assertion that 'a third of Tory voters have deserted May'.
The English equivalents are more stable - with much lower 'English not British' - but as in Scotland the top response is 'Equally [Nation] plus British'
https://twitter.com/NCPoliticsUK/status/958479413980618752
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/958611196135071744
Not much else she can say, but the specific mention of the next election might stir some do move against her rather than biding their time.
David Cameron makes net seat gains/wins a majority.
Mrs May makes net seat losses/loses a majority.
Most of the opposition to her now is from people opposed to Brexit. Once that issue becomes (relatively) settled, with treaties signed, then a lot of the attention will turn to domestic policy where she has a good range of ideas.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/31/houses-of-parliament-could-be-placed-on-at-risk-register-mps-told
I helped organise a big animal welfare reception there on Monday (attracted 40 Tory MPs) - we were amused to see two plump mice wandering round hoovering up the crumbs. But it's probably illustrative of the crumbling infrastructure, and Something Must Be Done, as they say.
Although, she was stood on the wing, screaming for the ball...
Oh wait...
Given how busy she is with Brexit etc and the fact the Tories are still almost neck and neck with Labour in the polls and no alternative leader polls significantly better than she does and many poll worse, an entirely plausible position I would have thought
https://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2018/01/our-survey-big-rise-in-those-saying-may-should-leave-number-ten-now-but-a-majority-believes-otherwise.html
https://twitter.com/nsoames/status/958621334992547841
https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/958622026465468416
Edited extra bit: and Alonso's now 22 for the title. I've already made my pre-season bets, but if I hadn't I'd put a little on that (I do prefer each way for such things, but those odds are just wrong, I think).
Locally, some of us battled on gamely....
My big fear is if there was a need for a snap election, the Tories still wouldn't know how to fight it. They'd still be clueless as to how to sell May, who seems pretty clueless on how to sell herself. Corbyn on the other hand would just repeat the same campaign as 2017, hoping nobody got round to pointing out the lack of Emperor's carefully costed garments. Again.
Which is why so many Tory MPs have an itchy finger on that ejector-seat button..
Thats the whole point in being a Zombie
However who was responsible for the policies adapted in the manifesto? Who was responsible for an utterly dismal manifesto that went down like a bucket of cold sick? The party leader, Theresa May.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5462108/ruth-davidson-now-voters-number-one-replace-may/
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/08/will-nicholas-soames-step-aside-to-make-way-for-prime-minister-rudd/
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/brexit-transition-explained
This keeps her safe until she has to decide in negotiations between her Lancaster House position and the commitment on the Irish border in phase 1 of the negotiations. When that contradiction is resolved she will then become what one wing or the other most fear, at which point they will have little to lose from pushing her out.
Interesting that duration of the transition phase is amber. With the Euroloons screaming that it should be strictly time-limited, and the EU saying it's strictly time-limited, one wonders why Tezza didn't make the easiest call on the planet and say it's, er, strictly time-limited.
Where's the market on transition period > Dec 2020??
https://www.wsj.com/articles/greystar-buys-modular-apartment-development-in-london-1517353051?mod=e2tw
On topic, what else was Theresa May going to say ? No politician could or would say anything else - Margaret Thatcher wasn't a quitter on the Tuesday evening but had gone by Thursday morning. David Cameron wasn't going to quit if the EU Referendum was lost but then quit.
As to whether May should go that's for the Conservative Party to decide - it's got bugger all to do with the rest of us who just have to live with the consequences. As an outsider May is safe until or unless two things happen - a) she is clearly shown to be a loser and b) someone else is clearly shown to be a winner.
It's worth repeating - what did for Thatcher weren't the polls showing the Conservatives 10 points behind Labour with her as leader - they'd been in worse positions - but the polls showing the Conservative and Labour parties level under Heseltine and later Major.
The election became about her and the realisation among MPs in marginal seats they would lose with her and win without her and when it comes down to it self-preservation will trump loyalty any day and every day.
It would be nice to have a cheerful leader of the Conservative Party. Someone who isn't apologetic.
I can't see Rudd ever leading. Gove would have to have gone around knifing most of the Party for Rudd to get the top job. Such as it would be.
Everyone needs to calm down for a couple of years, let Brexit happen and then think about Mrs May’s suitability to face the electorate.
"The broad view within the parliamentary party has been in that Theresa May would stand down in 2019"
is right - but it may be that she has to be pushed into standing down. Her determination to fight on doesn't change that.
Mike's correct that for her and her supporters, there can always be found reasons for not acting now (or for a preferred but undefined 'later'), but some reasons are better than others. The intensity of the Brexit negotiations is a prime reason for not acting now but that reason will end in the Spring of next year. Yes, there'll still be the final exit arrangement to sort out but a few months' breathing space then might actually be a good thing.
The big difference between now and, say, Thatcher or Major's time, is that then there was one scheduled leadership election a year which both focussed attention on that time but also meant that the scope to act at any other given time was very limited. Now, a leadership election can be triggered at any point, which while the argument of 'now or never' no longer applies (unlike in 1990 when if Heseltine hadn't acted after Howe's resignation, Thatcher would undoubtedly have led the Tories into 1992), it also means that the parliamentary party can act on a trigger of any given moment.
I wouldn't yet discount a delegation of grey-suited men going to No 10 next year to advise the PM to take the graceful way out.
We manage it, sort of, with the US, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.
Unless we make it so!
As for an Information Sharing Protocol with the EU on our exit, that won't be too difficult to put together.
If someone does fancy an Ermine coat to step aside for her, it becomes the solution for the Tory Party. She isn't mad like Boris. She isn't grey like Rudd or Cnut. She has some good old fashioned umph about her whilst still being clearly connected with the 21st century unlike most of the Tory MPs.
She'd win them the election. Which is why they won't go for her. The party has gone mad, and mad people elect mad people.