Sorry - that’s kind of what I was getting at when I said her other challengers flapped about and failed to stand.
It’s a similar story to May. She may well have been able to defeat all comers in a full contest - we’ll never know - but in the event, she didn’t have to. Gove took Boris out, Fox was never serious, Crabb was an outside shot who got blown up by a sex-scandal and Leadsom dug herself a hole, filled it with sharpened sticks and dove in head first.
With 80% of his own MPs no longer having confidence in him, it looks as though his plan is to have them replaced with a new cadre of loyalists. Since he has stronger support at grass-roots level than in the higher Labour Party echelons, he has a good chance of success with this strategy. It is speculated that this could lead to a break-up of the Labour Party.
It also means that I think it’s likely that he believes he’ll be Labour leader in 2018 and then going into the next General Election in 2020. Since the leadership contest between him and Owen Smith is voted on by all Labour Party members, there is a strong likelihood that this will be the case.
After a couple of decades of centrist politics, both of the big British political parties are moving away from the political middle ground.
And then Thatcher, much to her discredit, did nothing to groom or promote women within the party once she was PM. I’m not sure she even had any other women in the Cabinet by the time she was ousted.
It is no discredit to Thatcher at all. The record of females within the Tory Party has been just about acceptable. Female progress in the Party has not been great but neither has it been a disaster. In other words women have done fine by themselves without the help of Mrs T. In fact I would go as far to say Tory females politicians have generally proven themselves more professional than those in the Labour Party who were given a leg-up the ladder.
I mean the Tory Party aren’t entirely full of heavy hitting politicians, but the Tories look Churchillian in comparison to the current Labour lot. There must be some reason the most recent Labour leadership candidates include non-entities the likes of Jeremy Corbyn, Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall, Andy Burnham, Angela Eagle and Owen bloody Smith. Yvette Cooper and Burnham are probably the only semi-competent amongst them. All female shortlists & positive discrimination have imo partly led to this dearth of talent within the Labour ranks.
I would place Theresa May to the right of David Cameron, she’s there on an anti-immigration mandate and I can’t see that there would be any chance whatsoever of the Liberal Democrats, were they still a force, being willing to form a coalition with them.
How on Earth do you see recent developments in the Conservative Party as a move towards the centre?
Here are the percentage of people who voted for Brexit broken down by their political persuasion, from left to right on the political spectrum.
Green Party: 25%
Labour: 37%
Liberal Democrats: 30%
Conservative: 58%
UKIP: 96%
The political spectrum is a horseshoe. The Nazi Party emerged from the German Workers’ Party and their official name was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
Surely you are aware of the link between anti-immigration rhetoric and the (far-)right? Wikipedia’s definition of “far-right politics”:
For Thatcher to have delighted in saying so often “If you want something said, get a man; if you want something done, get a woman,” and then to have appointed so few women to any position of prominence, and only a single one to the Cabinet in more than 11 years as PM, does not speak well of her. IMHO it’s hard to believe she could have found no others of merit.
In fairness, during those same eleven years there were only four female members of the Labour Shadow Cabinet and never more than two in it at the same time.
Conversely, just because there were non-racist reasons to vote Leave doesn’t mean that substantial elements of the campaign weren’t based on racism and xenophobia.
