Incoming British Prime Minister Theresa May
On Wednesday, as usual, David Cameron will answer Prime Minister’s Questions in the British House of Commons, but he will then tender his resignation to Queen Elizabeth and step down as Prime Minister. His successor will be current Interior Minister Theresa May, whose overweening responsibility as the new P.M. will be to successfully guide Britain through the “Brexit” process with Europe, while preventing a fracturing of the United Kingdom, as Scotland and Northern Ireland threaten to depart the union. As an overture to Scottish sympathies, May appeared dressed in tartan apparel on Thursday, June 30, when she announced her bid to run for the UK’s top post.
But the real story here is how May, and not outspoken former London mayor and pro-Brexiter Boris Johnson, ended up as heir-apparent to the departing Cameron. The twists, turns and political maneuvering within Britain’s ruling Conservative (a.k.a. “Tory”) Party leading up to May’s ascension involve intrigue, plotting and betrayal worthy of a thrilling book or movie plot line. The fallout brought down two of the biggest proponents on the Leave side of the Brexit referendum and elevated a Remain proponent to negotiate the country’s momentous departure from the European Union.
The main players in this drama, which is being referred to in the British press as the “cuckoo nest plot,” are Johnson, Justice Secretary Michael Gove, Gove’s wife and Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, energy Minister Andrea Leadsom, and Minister for skills Nick Boles. As told by The Telegraph in a day-by-day, hour-by-hour breakdown of the unfolding events, the plot was launched at a dinner party in February where it appears the scheming Gove convinced Johnson to come down squarely on the Leave side, which Johnson could then use as a vehicle to ascend as the next Prime Minister.
It seems that by the end of the night Mr Gove, a lifelong Eurosceptic with an “obsession” for getting Britain out of Europe, had persuaded [Mr Johnson] which side of the fence he should come down on … Mr Johnson knew he was risking everything, but the potential prize was too tempting to ignore: win the EU referendum, and the keys to Number 10 would surely be his.
But Gove and his wife, Sarah Vine (whom The Telegraph refers to as “the Lady Macbeth of the Tory leadership drama”), were apparently only using Johnson’s popularity to advance their own ambitions. They spent the early days of the Leave campaign building support for Gove’s own position, rather than supporting Johnson, as would have been expected. The first weekend after the campaign’s kickoff, they apparently spent colluding with George Osborne, a Remain proponent.
[Mr Gove and Ms Vine were] spending the weekend at Dorneywood, the Chancellor’s official country residence, as guests of George Osborne. Perhaps Mr Osborne, a keen chess player who loves few things as much as political plotting, was already making his own arrangements for what might happen if the Brexit vote went against him.
Division between Gove and Johnson soon began to flare. Gove began making demands regarding a future Johnson administration, such as the granting of the Chancellor’s position to himself, and inclusion of controversial Leave strategist Dominic Cummings. Nevertheless, Johnson, already publicly committed to the Leave cause, continued to campaign hard to promote the path he had chosen.
But Johnson’s campaign was fraught with disturbing blunders and coincidences. A private meeting of Leave strategists at Johnson’s Oxfordshire home was inexplicably greeted outside by reporters and cameras; it was later discovered that the meeting had been leaked “accidentally” through Sarah Vine. Then, at Gove’s urging, Johnson penned an essay in The Daily Telegraph in which he seemed to soften his stance on how a post-Brexit UK might retain some ties to the EU. Leave supporters were appalled, and doubt began to grow within the campaign as to whether Johnson was fully committed to the cause. Another “accidental” leak via Ms Vine shortly thereafter made the growing rift between Gove and Johnson a matter of public record, sowing further doubt among Leave partisans.
Still, Gove himself seemed publicly committed to Johnson. And by late June, with prominent Leave proponent Andrea Leadsom poised to drop her own leadership ambitions and support Johnson, the timing seemed right for Johnson to launch his campaign for Prime Minister in the wake of the successful Brexit vote and David Cameron’s announced resignation.
That evening, the Conservative Party’s Summer Ball was held at the Hurlingham Club in London, and there was, of course, only one topic of conversation … Mr Johnson had 97 MPs unofficially backing him by then, but his supporters were worried it would not be enough if the Tories’ 200-plus other MPs united behind a “stop Boris” candidate.
Now, on the verge of Johnson’s campaign launch, Gove began peeling off Johnson’s supporters, starting with Minister for skills, Nick Boles.
At 5.30pm that day Mr Boles had been at the home of Nigel Adams MP, busily working on Mr Johnson’s leadership campaign … [But] as midnight approached, he was deep in conversation with Mr Gove, conspiratorially discussing whether Mr Johnson was a busted flush.
The conspirators may have been working with the knowledge, unknown to Johnson, that Andrea Leadsom had decided to withdraw her support from Johnson and continue her own campaign for the Premiership. Gove continued to secretly build support for his own candidacy, meanwhile keeping the Johnson campaign in the dark until just before the campaign’s planned kick-off announcement, when Gove emailed a statement to the press, withdrawing his support from Johnson and instead announcing his own candidacy. This started the political dominoes falling.
With two hours to go until Mr Johnson’s launch event, support for him was starting to collapse.
At this point, the race for the leadership became a feeding frenzy, the circumstances changing dramatically over a period of just a few hours on the last day of June. With supporters bailing out from Johnson, and Gove and Leadsom both with their hats in the ring, Theresa May also declared her candidacy in a reportedly pitch-perfect address at the Royal United Services Institute on Whitehall. Politicos began rapidly switching sides, trying to determine where their best fortunes lay.
Over at camp Boris, MPs were withdrawing their support by the minute. The 97 backing him were now down to 47, and Mr Johnson’s team realised they had been undone by what they referred to as a “cuckoo nest plot”. For months Mr Johnson had nurtured Mr Gove’s grand plan for Brexit, only to be kicked out when it finally hatched.
By the time Johnson stood in front of the cameras, he had only 25 MPs there to back him as he gave a very different speech than the one he had intended hours earlier. The news of his withdrawal from the race shocked everyone who was not an insider to that morning’s shifting events, and left Johnson feeling “sad, disappointed and betrayed.”
Gove’s double-dealing, however, did not accrue to his success. When it became obvious what Gove and his wife had been plotting all along, the party turned its back on him.
As Mr Gove entered the Members’ Tea Room in Parliament on Thursday afternoon, there were no cheers or applause. The only greeting from five MPs who were in the room was: “---- off.” Politics is indeed a dirty business.
As Politico put it after a stinging vote against Gove by Conservative MPs, the support Gove had worked to build during and after the Brexit vote simply evaporated, leaving him “crushed.”
Michael Gove’s treatment of fellow Brexiteer Boris Johnson backfired spectacularly as Tory MPs swung behind Andrea Leadsom in the race to become the next prime minister and party leader.
… After standing side-by-side throughout the bitter Brexit campaign, Gove surprised Johnson — and everyone else — by announcing a leadership bid of his own, forcing Johnson to abandon his own pitch to replace David Cameron and take the top job in British politics. The bold move — and the accompanying trashing of Johnson with the words “Boris cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead” — failed to pay off.
Subsequent statements by Leadsom have since forced her withdrawal from the race, leaving Theresa May as the only candidate still standing. May will be the second woman, after Margaret Thatcher, to serve as British Prime Minister. Though she was decidedly in the Remain camp before the Brexit vote, May has committed to the course set by the referendum. But of equal concern to the new Tory leader will be the healing of her party after a process that has left deep divisions in the country, brought down two of the most powerful political voices for the Brexit, and left the continued political unity of both the United Kingdom and the Tory Government in doubt.
