‘She doesn’t do likes’

As Tory MPs gathered at St Stephen’s entrance in Parliament to await their new leader on Monday afternoon, a choir in Westminster Hall began to sing. The hosannas spoke to the sense of relief among Tory MPs: they had been spared a long and divisive nine-week leadership contest. A period of political blood-letting brutal even by Tory standards was coming to an end. The United Kingdom would have a new Prime Minister.

More than relief, there was hope for the bulk of MPs who had previously not been marked out for advancement. Theresa May’s accession shows that the narrow rules which were thought to govern modern British politics are not hard and fast. May is not one of the shiny people. She isn’t a member of a gilded political set. Her success is the triumph of hard grind, perseverance and determination. She kept her head when all about her were losing theirs.

May’s career is very different from Tony Blair’s and David Cameron’s. She was in her forties, not thirties, when she became an MP. Her political experience before Parliament came from being a councillor. It has taken her 19 years from taking her seat in the Commons to reach Downing Street, compared with nine years for Cameron and 14 for Blair. She is also older than both of those men were, not only than when they first entered No. 10, but when they left it too.

Theresa May’s new Cabinet
Listen to Isabel Hardman, Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Colleen Graffy discuss the PM’s new appointments:

‘What a lot of us love is that she is older than us. Everything is possible,’ says one Tory minister who backed her. A cabinet minister told me that May’s arrival marks the end of the fashion for younger, media–friendly leaders.