The correct focus to her campaign from here on could see Andrea Leadsom sailing into Number 10
While PCP leadership favourite Theresa May is working hard to position herself as a shoo-in for the Tory coronation, like much of what she claims, this is a falsehood. The run-off round is now the province of the broader Party membership. Andrea Leadsom still has everything to play for. The Slog explains why.
There are a couple of things that the pro-May press are being, shall we say, rather coy about. The first is that with 194 of the Tory lobby fodder on her side, Theresa’s leadership victory is a done deal. The second is that – as with most political ‘Parties’ these days – the grassroots has very different views to those of the Westminster bubble-dwellers.
I’m told (via the pollster bush telegraph, of which I am still a member) that discreet polling by rich person or persons not to be identified has revealed that Conservative grassroots activists, while generally approving of Theresa Maniac, also quite like the cut of Andrea Leadshot’s gib.
More to the point, however, the survey also suggests that some 68% of motivated Conservative ex-Parliamentary Party members are in favour of Brexit.
This is an issue upon which Leadshot’s credentials are far more certain and trustworthy than those of Theresa Mayormaynot.
Being generally more articulate and less blinkered than Labour’s grassroots (although not by much) local Conservative members will, I’m sure, have spotted that senior Tory Remaindeer diehards are backpedalling from Brexit action like an Italian regiment retreating from Greek partisans.
Leadsom, by contrast, has made it clear that her first act as Prime Minister will be to trigger Article 50 and stop the foot-dragging. A50 is indeed a Maginot Line, but it has the ability to slow things down if used pedantically: triggering it is a way of sayig to Brussels, ‘Get it straight: we are not going to change our minds’.
Another fascinating fact about the profile of Conservative activists is that the core group consists of women aged 50+….soon to become victims of George Osborne’s outrageous State pension heist. The more militant and destitute 1950’s-born UK women are rapidly catching on to the need to pressurise more to get what they want. This has just gone up at the new Waspi-sting FaceBook page aimed at the more desperate victims of this National Disgrace:
For those on the Left keen to rubbish Ms Leadsom as part of the Rabid Right, a commitment by her to review that DWP/Treasury theft policy would spike their guns. The Left – true as ever to its principles – is already declaring May the winner, because they see her for what she is: a potential Brexit backslider.
Although in no way sympathetic to either the Conservative or Labour narratives being followed at the minute, it seems to me nevertheless important to point out one irrefutable Truth to Round 3 Tory leadership electors: A vote for Leadsom is a vote for genuine liberty and a speedy Brexit process; but a vote for May would be to support draconian anti-free speech legislation, and encourage the Brexit naysayers to overrule the Referendum result.
The choice is yours.
The Slog 