A sad day.

Outrageous. 

The Dark Arts certainly have done it for Mrs Leadsom.  The woman who came second in a vote by MPs has stood aside.  One can only speculate the pressure she has been put under by the establishment attack dogs, for that is what they were.

But there is a serious problem for both the Conservative party and the nation.  We are now not going to allowed to have the debate in society about the future direction of the nation that we desperately needed.  A coronation is no mandate by the people.   

And the foot soldiers who do all the heavy lifting at election time on the doorsteps are not going to be happy.

How to engineering a coup d'état.

So, I think this is how it works.  You need new party leader.  The rules say that the leader is to be selected from the sitting MP’ in a very simple process.  Any MP can put their name forward.  Then, by a system of ballots, the two candidates that the MPs would like recommend to the wider Membership of the party that are leadership material go forward to the Members across the county for them to make the final decision, are selected.  In other words, the 330 MPs have themselves whittled that number down to the final 2 to present to the membership.

One must assume that they thought long and hard about what they are doing.  It is a big decision sending the two candidates out of 330 MPs to the Members for them to decide out of these two which will be the leader.  And in this case, prime minister.

Simple.

Except it’s not.  Apparently, according to MPs like Anna Soubry, one of the candidates is not prime minister material.  Well, she would say that having backed the other candidate.  But wait a minute.  This leaves us with the intriguing though disturbing thought that there is only one person in the whole of that 330 Conservative MPs who is prime ministerial material.

It also suggests people like Anna Soubry are trying to dismiss the rules of the party and deny the Membership a say by engineering a coup d'état to stop Mrs Leadsom being presented to the Members of the party.  Looks like the nasty party Mrs May once described hasn’t quite gone away yet. 

Hiding below the decks when the battle rages is not leadership.

The battle between May and Leadsom is not a battle between them to be leader of the party.  It’s not even a battle to be prime minister.  It’s a battle for the very soul of the Conservative party.  

On two sides we have very different ideologies.  The free marketer, let’s go back into the world again vs the lets go steady as she goes with no surprises.

For me, in these In time like these, we need vision, we need to look out, we need adventurous spirit because the rest of the world wants us to be like that.  More of the same is a recipe for disaster.  This is a time we have given ourselves of opportunity.  We need to grasp it. 

Mrs Mays words today outside parliament were depressing.  They didn’t talk about onwards and upwards.  They talked about steady hand and experience.  All well and good, though her Home Office record does have more than a few awkward moments.

The fact IDS is backing Leadsom does it for me.  Outward looking for opportunity.  Inward looking to look after those who need looking after.

Just remember one thing, in the Referendum Mrs May hid below the decks while everyone else was out there working in the Referendum ...says a lot for her character. People took masses of flack for their brexit positions and she couldn't be bothered, or tactically didn’t want to, get involved.

Pretty poor show while everyone else was nailing their colours to a Leave or Remain mast, she hid below decks.  And hardly leadership.  

It may well come back to haunt her.