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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Theresa May tops Boris for the first time in CONHome survey as preferred next party leader
This could mean something or it could mean nothing but the December CONHome survey of party members sees a change at the top as preferred next party leader.
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2. CONHome is not representative
3. These surveys are always about name recognition anyway
4. Tories, as a whole, don't give a flying fig about the schools people went to. That seems entirely an obsession of the left.
Next thread, please.
Boris Johnson 5/1 (various)
Theresa May 6/1 (Betfair)
Michael Gove 9/1
William Hague 14/1
Phillip Hammond 17/1
George Osborne 16/1
David Davish 20/1
Jesse Norman 25/1
Nick Boles 33/1
Liam Fox 33/1
Sam Gyimah 33/1
Jeremy Hunt 33/1
Sajid Javid 33/1
Grant Shapps 33/1
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/05/david-davis-and-the-tories-class-war/
What's damaging isn't so much the school they went to in itself, it's the perception that they've formed a clique of people who went to the same school, and they're locking other people out. I don't know whether this is really justified or not - there will be plenty of people in the inner circle who don't fit the stereotype - but since the perception exists there has to be some political benefit to looking like a change from it.
Voters want someone who is comfortable in their own skin, competent and with an ability to empathise. If someone has that then they will engage just fine with the voters. Of course "out of touch OE" is an easy attack, but as we saw in Crewe (?) it doesn't, on it's own, have much of an impact, although it can be used as a tool to magnify the impact of other weaknesses.
(I actually think the London-centric nature of the current Tory leadership is a greater weakness, both politically and in terms of their ability to effectively lead to country)
The David Davis crap is just disgruntled people who lost of leadership election and can't get over it.
The last time a non-state school CON leader led his party to an overall majority was Macmillan in 1959
I've been saying for years that Boris will never (aside from some disaster) be Conservative leader; that ship has sailed. Would he be a good leader? With the right people under him, yes. Would he be a good PM? I don't know.
As for Theresa May: it's sad to say, but she's too old. If there is a change of leader, then the Conservatives will be looking for someone to take them into the 2020 GE. At that time May will be 64, and will sadly be too old to be electable. I doubt the Conservatives will go for a stop-gap. She would be a competent leader.
We need to look elsewhere, amongst the younger crowd. Rory Stewart has always impressed me, but he will probably be too inexperienced in 2015 to be the next leader. We need to be looking at the 2001 or 2005 intakes who have had junior positions in this government.
I don't have anything particularly against May (and what makes you think I do?). She has done a fairly good job in a difficult post, seems a solid performer. I wonder if she has the 'X' factor that helps in a PM, but equally it may be that grinding solidity is what voters are looking for.
Although the thought of Theresa May appearing in 'Smack My B8tch Up' is amusing. ;-)
(Rewatching the uncensored video, I wonder if it's actually a biopic of SeanT's life...)
Since WWII only Attlee, Wilson and Blair have won a majority for Labour.
IIRC (haven't checked, may be Major wasn't?), all the state school Tory leaders were grammar school educated.
In our system as it stands, the vast majority of PMs have a top-flight university education. To achieve this they need a great secondary school education. However, the secondary modern experience/elimination of assisted places has resulted in a dumbing down of educational standards for the academically brightest among those unable to afford private education. Given the overwhelming importance of education in an information-centric society, this makes it harder and harder for people from average backgrounds to make it to the very top.
Fix education, allow and encourage the best to achieve their potential, and hopefully we will see this trend begin to reverse. (As an aside there is a very interesting theory - I think it is David Canadine who originally came up with it - that it was social mobility and the willingness of the British ruling classes to co-opt talented members of the population that reduced the impetus for revolution)
On Boris...
The idea that Boris is remotely empathetic is a joke. I suspect The man has no clue or the slightest care how I (or many others) live my life. The idea that he is competent is hardly universally accepted. Surprised you think he would be a dreadful leader, but fear you're right.
I do quite like Sajid Javid though, but it may be that his investment banker background comes back to haunt him
Excellent to see you posting. Hope you are hail and hearty.
By effectively crippling the SLDs for a generation he has at the very least opened the door to independence. Remember, no Lib-Con coalition in 2010 would have meant no overall SNP majority in 2011, and therefore no independence referendum.
@Charles John Major wet to a state school.
LOL
No wonder kippers are feeling chipper with that kind of Cameroon attitude to the tory base still prevalent.
The lefty John Major who no doubt its feeling bitter because he lost a leadership election and couldn't win a majority like Cammie did. *chortle*
But I am surprised that Osborne has not improved his standing somewhat. He is very closely tied to Cameron and if Cameron got hammered in 2015 he would clearly go as well. But if Cameron were to either win outright or even keep largest party I think Osborne would get a huge amount of the credit and would be very well placed. If Cameron were going at a time of his own choosing in the next Parliament Osborne would probably be favourite.
This has been an extremely stable government with very few and quite modest reshuffles. This means there has been very little opportunity for the newer members to progress or really shine. My knowledge of Jarvid is that he sends me (and no doubt a million others) e-mails quite regularly. Goodness knows if he actually writes them but most purport to come from Cameron and Osborne so it is interesting that he gets a name check quite so often.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutlish_School
He's right. Declining social mobility is a huge issue. That's not a question of which school you went to so much as the UK is failing to use its human capital as effectively as possible
She'd make them completely unelectable, of course, (if they aren't already) so hopefully she gets the job. Not only would she win me a decent amount of money but they'd be out of power for ages! Bonus ;-)
Heck, his bopic was reportedly purchased by Brad Pitt's production company before he was an MP.
He's a heavyweight, especially when compared to the current leaders.
This is a terrible waste of our talents and does not bode well for future economic performance. Lifting the terrible performance of our state schools and giving the able children that attend them many more avenues to success is key to our future. In Scotland I really cannot comment on whether Academies, free Schools or the other Gove reforms are going to work in practice but he is trying to improve a complacent and failing mindset that is far too easily satisfied with its own performance.
In Scotland we have none of this as producer interests continue to dominate. There were league tables in the Courier this week. Some state schools in this area had 1% of pupils achieving 5 highers, the requirement for getting into a good university. By and large these are the same schools that were failing their pupils more than 30 years ago when I was at school. Nothing has been done and nothing is proposed. We have no special measures. We simply have more children give no chance at all whatever their ability.
I think we all know it means nothing, but it does allow ‘Bullingdon Club’ to be shoehorned into a thread header. - Job done!
One day it's finally going to sink in that Osbrowne is an out of touch liability for voters and no amount of GDP stats or OECD projections are ever going to change that. Why on earth do you think little Ed can keep a crap shadow chancellor like Balls where he is and not worry too much about it? (there's also a rather huge internal labour reason why Balls isn't going anywhere and I'm going to enjoy spotting which PB tory finally works it out)
All the tories accomplish by having to have Osbrowne front the economy is to diminish any good news by tainting it with his own personal toxicity. It's not going to go away and more than calamity Clegg's toxicity is. That means we're gong to see a repeat of the hilarity in 2010 when Osbrowne made himself as scarce as possible lest his own personal toxicity taint Cammie's election campaign too much.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/09/why-a-toryukip-alliance-would-benefit-labour/
Maybe they need the opposite to do it: A centrist-looking leader, who can cut an electoral deal with UKIP (say offer them a referendum + a clear run in 10 winnable seats and 20 hopeless ones) without sending UKIP-phobic voters running to Lab.
Clegg's problem is that he was always on the right of the Lib Dems as a party and even more so of their voters. This worked perfectly well when the tories were in the doldrums and there were soft tory targets but as the tories revived the Lib Dems found themselves squeezed, hence lost seats at the last election.
The fact he looks pretty comfortable in a tory government does not help him either. As a result more than half of their support has gone walkabout and may not come back. The next Lib Dem leader will come from the left of the party to try to correct this.
We will just have to disagree about Osborne.
Edit. Also did a Kinnock, first in 100 generations to go to Uni.
It was one of his better speeches. He wasn't capable of much, Neil Kinnock, but he gave 3 or 4 truly outstanding and memorable speeches. Better than most politicians.
Cammie on the other hand tried at least superficially when he embarked on his tory detox posturing for the 2010 election. The reason Cameron has such problems from his backbenchers and grassroots though is that they might have been prepared to swallow that posturing to win but they weren't quite so happy with it when he failed to win a majority and had to go running to Clegg to save him with a coalition. Hence the ability of Farage to easily capitalise on tory discontent.
We can indeed disagree about Osbrowne but it's just a fact that some politicians fail to connect to voters and will always have a problem being popular. That needn't kill a political career of course and as we know from past tory leadership elections it isn't even necessarily a barrier to becoming leader. However, you can be absolutely certain any ambitious minister or shadow cabinet member watches their personal political ratings like a hawk. Despite their rote protestations to the contrary they care about them deeply and know that they do matter.
I can't see it really, not Theresa May! Not the Theresa May who called her own party the "Nasty Party", and therefore earning opprobrium from left, right and centre; and they haven't recovered from that since. No, not Theresa May for leader.
*chortle*
Because they didn't want me to go to Wetherby's, Summerfields, Eton, Oxford and the City...
http://youtu.be/cknGCCG-XKU
I am sure she`ll apologise but not career-ending I don`t think.
Truly tis the season of goodwill to all headline writers.
I can't imagine how or why someone would say it in real life? I know the phrase 'poker up his arse' but why change that for a 'finger' and why add 'and he's enjoying it'. It's a bad insult, it's completely inappropriate and says to me she's not suitable as an MP or a minister.
Did she actually say that?
This is getting more weird by the minute.
It seemed a rather expensive way to save on school fees ... ;-)
It also meant that I could never say I left my homework at home. I tried it once and my teacher told me to go and get it ...
She'll be scrabbling around now to apologise, someone will ask Cameron about it, and she'll take a hit. Bearing in mind her marginal seat, it was a stupid thing to say.
If he wants it though he should be a future leader, he is a class apart from any of the others mentioned.
Mick - I think in the public conscience when an MP says another MP likes someone else to put a finger up his arse, there is not much else that can top it. Totally bizarre thing to say....and very weird.
Something vaguely homophobic about Anna Soubry joking that Nigel likes a finger up the ass. Good old Tories.
Avery LP, I'll take the left goalpost and you can take the right goalpost and we can take you polling crossover goalposts wherever you want.
First it was imminent....then it was Xmas......where now for Aver LP's polling crossover?
Sure NPxMP will be diplomatic about the matter on here