Who will follow Cameron?

Richard of York

Next leader of the Tories will be David Laws more tory than Tebbit. If they can get him out of hiding that is.

Perhaps he is helping Gordon write the history of the credit crunch.

Andre

He's only just assumed office! DC will have all the longevity of a Churchill and a Gladstone

Wight Tory

Bloody Hell, he's only just got the job... Next Tory leader is not be in Today's Government

TrevorsDen

Changing party leaders is fraught with danger.

Look whats happened to labour. And if they thought Brown was bad enough, just look at the lot bidding to replace him.

There are many qualities required to be a party leader and PM. Brown was notably lacking in what is probably the most important - a thick skin.

Simon Stephenson

Is it too much to hope that Mr Cameron's successor will be the person most suited to dealing with the state of the country as and when Cameron decides to retire? In a situation where the ConLib policies have coincided with a return of the UK to prosperous stability, one would hope that Cameron himself would have a big say in who should succeed him. On the other hand, if ConLib policies prove to be utterly inappropriate for dealing with the real difficulties this country faces, then one would hope that Cameron and his supporters would have the decency and the patriotism to recognise that perhaps a completely different type of Conservatism is what is required.

At the moment, about 50% of the voting public, on the Right and on the Left, are to all intents and purposes disfranchised by government being carried out on a managerial, apolitical basis from the centre. As one of these disfranchised people, I fully accept that there will be a strong case made for centrism should the governance of the coalition prove to be successful governance. But, the other side of the coin is that should centrist government prove to be a failure, as many of us believe that it is destined to be, there must be room given to the thought that intellectual politics is the only way to run a country successfully, not a combination of false advocacy and micro-management of the status-quo.

TrevorsDen

PS
Looking at your tag cloud I get the strangest case of Schadenfreude when I see how tiny Peter Mandelson's name has become.

AndyinBrum

Trevor. These hollowed out volcanic lairs take a while to build, he'll be back when it's finished

Robert Eve

Lets have Dan Hannan next.

Michael Buckeridge

Jeremy Hunt lacks integrity....one only needs to scratch the surface to see that not only does he lack honesty, as shown by the way he has handled his expenses, but he lacks the transparency he espouses, by his deletion of his tweets and his blogs, and his refusal to open himself to any real scrutiny.

Mycroft

How about Bercow? I'm sure he'd love a change by the time that Cameron wants to stand down, and just think of the pension that he'd get by combining the two!

Dan Grover

Hannan would be fantastic for me, but awful electorally I think. As much as everyone loved his Youtube hit, I don't think he'd prove to be too much of an electoral asset as a leader. He'd be fantastic as something like defense or foreign policy, where people like right wingers. The UK's too married to the NHS to have him in anything close to that, though, alas.

Verity

Daniel Hannan is my choice, too. A man of principal, acute intelligence and articulacy. And for sure, he will never start calling himself "Dan" to sidle up to the voters.

charles hercock

Robert E,Dan G and Verity: You shou your atavistic Tory tendencies.Things have moved on to Cosy Cuddly Coalitionism

Roger Davies

Maybe the next PM will be rotated on an annual basis ensuring gender, religion, race and political position factors? All in the name of equality and sustaining the bland centre left, centre right, centre ground control of Parliament. I have seen the future and the future is not blue or red or yellow, it's a sort of very pale buff.

wonderfulforhisage

Carswell?

David Bouvier

Verity - do you ever give up your petty and bitter barbs at David "Dave" Cameron? Though having lost touch I knew Hannan 20 years ago and he has as far as I know always been "Dan" to all and sundry in Westminster.

Perhaps his mother calls him "Daniel" - is that who you are?

alexsandr

Too early to say
I would expect one of the Tories in the cabinet (Or even maybe in non cabinet govt jobs..), but we have to see which of those shine.
I wouldnt put serious money on Osbourne, tho....

Daniel1979

After Hannan's dressing down of Gordon Brown in the EU Parliament last year I placed a £5 bet with Ladbrokes that he would be the next leader. I got 100/1 odds online. (I just checked it, he is now down to 50/1)

So, he would be my bet on the assumption that it will be a good few years before the question seriously comes up and that Carswell will have persuaded him by then that he would be able to achiveve more towards their direct democracy agenda if he too was in Westminster.

Victor Southern

Indeed, one wonders why Verity [who lives in Mexico] carries on these bitter attacks. The entire matter of who governs the UK can be of little importance to him/her.

Politics in Mexico are far more interesting with political assassinations still the vogue and entire towns in the north in the hands of the drug cartels.

yank

Why not Osborne? Notice that the iconographic photo of this nascent regime is of him with that case. Who knows how it will all turn out, but the contents of that case seem to be what's driving affairs, so it'd be wise to remember the guy who's holding it, and who filled it.

Gordon

Rory the Tory

Danko

my money is on Rory Stewart

Ian C

Pointless, irrelevant blather - along with all the idiot guff about the merging of Cons and Libs.

Journalists should learn to just say nothing when there is nothing to say. Especially the better journalists, as they will become less good journalists very rapidly.

Verity

David Bouvier - I don't know quite how to respond to your weird post. I don't care when you knew Daniel Hannan, if that is your little claim to fame, but he signs himself Daniel in his pieces.

Why would you think it was entertaining to ask whether I'm his mother? The answer is no. Nor am I his sister, an aunt, a cousin or a neighbour. What was it in your question that you felt was barbed, clever or pointed?

I have only ever encountered the name as Daniel Hannan because that is how he presents himself to the public.

I quite enjoy clever insults, but yours didn't qualify.

Republican Tory

Justine Greening

Verity

Victor Southern - Ah, the bracing smell of ignorance to pep up the mountain air!

Could you name a political assassination since President Calderon - right wing; bi-lingual; three degrees, one of them a Master's in Civil Administration from Harvard - took office? Or, indeed, conservative President Fox before him?

Thanks to Obama, the US, the biggest customer for illegal drugs in the world, has porous borders. Mexico is between the supplier, Colombia, and their greediest and richest customer, the United States.

The geography is hardly Mexico's fault and they pour an enormous amount of their national treasure and brain power into combatting this trade.

Why don't you sneer at Colombia and its president?

TGF UKIP

Preferably someone of whom you and d'Ancona would disapprove, James.