It’s taken me a while, but I think I’ve got my head around this now. Grant Shapps is proposing that the Conservative Party should hold a protracted contest to select a new chief, and thus render itself and the Government of Britain leaderless for several weeks, at a time when the UK economy and public finances are worsening and Brexit talks are going horribly. And he’s doing this because he says the Conservatives need to demonstrate leadership.
When you think of it that way, you start to understand the (really rather unkind) things Tory MPs are saying about Mr Shapps today.
Not that anyone is saying he’s wrong about Theresa May. She’s in a dreadful state, the PM. But the brutal truth is that for the Conservatives today, there are no good choices, just degrees of badness. One option is to persist with a broken leader, the May government limping on to the other side of the Article 50 timetable in March 2019 before she bows out, probably in favour of someone who is not in the current Cabinet.
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