Who to replace Cameron?

There is also a big difference between choosing a Labour leader and a Tory leader. The Tory membership only get to vote between the final two, it having been whittled down by MPs.
The Labour membership get to vote on all those put up before it.

I agree that as a way of choosing a party leader it is as democratic (or not) as the LP DD but they are not (I have just heard a lower number by the way) just choosing a party leader they are choosing a PM and choosing this person on a changed manifesto to the one that was voted on. The vote to leave and the Conservative reaction to this and the changes the vote to leave has caused to the economy, etc., have ensured this.

A lot of people on gransnet would vote for Leadsom's exhortation to optimism.
Just hoping those who tell us to get over it do not have a vote.

It has been suggested, Gracesgran, that as Leadsom has never been party to cabinet agreements, there should be a general election if she is voted in, so she can get her own mandate agreed to.
Is that a good enough reason to vote for her?

I also heard it said this morning that politics is getting too much like a Jeffrey Archer novel these days. Never having read one, I have no idea. Lots of back stabbing, plotting, machinations?

That's my point, gracesgran. The Labour Party can argue as much as they like at the moment, but it's highly unlikely that they'll form the government which leads us through BREXIT negotiations. The Prime Minister will have an influence and we don't even know where we're going.

I've been discussing this on my MP's Facebook page. He's a Conservative Remainer and has become involved with the discussion. He's getting a lot of criticism from Leavers for backing May. A couple of non-Conservative voters and I have become his buddies because our argument is that the way forward now should be what's best for everybody (including the 48%). My constituency was 51% Leave/49% Remain, so arguments that he's being undemocratic are (in my opinion) wrong. There were only a few votes in it and he's been very clear all along that he's pro-EU.

He's gone up in my estimation for engaging with voters.

It wouldn't surprise me if Jeffrey is sitting in his very nice house in Granchester penning a draft!

Off to have a look at my MPs FB page - thanks DD

I wasn't winning or "loosing" (your word - letting loose?) any argument, gg because I wasn't in any argument. I merely joined in to say that "carping about the party [which I don't think is your party?] choosing a new leader without consulting you is just that - carping". If the cap fits, wear it. If it doesn't fit, I won't force you into it.

A general election could well be on the cards in a very short while. By then it should be clear who the preferred leaders of all the parties are.

It is my country Elegran although I realise there are many currently deciding that freedom of speech and democracy only belongs to certain people.

For goodness sake at every election there will be those who can say the PM/government has been thrust up on me. It's called a democratic vote.

The alternative is a dictatorship or communism where you are not given the option to speak for an alternative. Sometimes I wonder if this is a preferred option for some.

If I had said I didn't want Gordon Brown to take over from Tony Blair when he resigned , I demanded a General Election, I would be 'carping'. A General Election means the electorate are choosing which 'Party' they wish to govern at any one time. It is supposed to be about the party manifesto , although no party has ever stuck to theirs because any reasonable person understands as time moves forward a sensible government moves forward in a direction that accommodates the issues the country finds itself facing at any one given time.

Democracy.

It's funny when people march on the streets that's called 'PEOPLE POWER'

When people vote in their millions that's ' NOT PEOPE POWER' to some because it doesn't suit them.

If at the next election the party I don't want, did not vote for get's into power then so be it. I am not so narcissistic as to believe I alone have a divine right to elect a government and most certainly not to stop the democratic process that I believe to be the best in the world from being carried out because it doesn't suit me.

POGS

gg It is your country, and you are concerned for where it is heading. So are a lot of other people.

At the moment, the Conservative party, under Cameron, has the government. The decision to resign en masse and trigger a general election is theirs. They may face strong pressure to do so, but the decision will be theirs.

To contest an election without any leader at all would be party suicide. They would be mad to try it. They need a new leader before any election. That leader will probably be a stop-gap (like Corbyn) while the party re-forms (who knows, perhaps even reforms without the hyphen) and then a longer-term leader will emerge from the ranks.

Meanwhile a negotiating team will sort out the terms for UK departure, and subsequently renegotiate a lot of agreements which will be made null and void. That team will keep the government of the day fully informed of progress.

@POGS

Another alternative is a better form of democracy. There are dozens to choose from.

Good article by Philip Collins in which he argues, very reasonably, that party members choosing the leader of their parliamentary party is "pure folly". One only needs to look at the Labour Party's current mess – the membership electing Corbyn and 172 Labour MPs thinking this is a disaster – to see this. It was Ed Miliband who brought this nuttiness in.

In the UK, the electorate isn't choosing which party it wishes to govern. Only a few hundred thousand voters' votes actually matter and it's rare for a party to be voted in by an absolute majority of votes - quite apart from those who don't vote for whatever reason.

Thank you for the link, thatbags.

I hadn't read it before I made my point about lack of democracy. It's obvious why Philip Collins is a paid journalist while I'm not, because he expresses what I was trying to say, but so much better.

WE are perhaps getting slightly off subject when we argue/discuss the iniquities of how parties elect their leader who will then be PM. the system is how it is and there is little we can do about it. However, the prospect of the Pollyanna of politics, Andrea Leadsom with her complete denial of economic facts, her dubious CV, her lack of cabinet and government experience, family donations to the party, lack of publication of tax returns, family business registered in BVI etc., etc., plus the fact that she has a patronising way of talking to anyone........I honestly thought it couldnt get any worse, but now I know it can. If you have the chance, listen to her interview with Jenni Murray on Woman's Hour on Tuesday 28th June, she is sneering, patronising, rude to the other guests and was still insisting on the accuracy of the £350m per week figure.....Jenni Murray was politely despairing. I am now morphing from incredulity, through rage, and now into fear. This is developing into a perfect financial storm.

@ Pollyanna of politics!

I seriously don't know how she's got the nerve to say what she does. I've been used to lying on a CV being a sackable offence.

This is what she said to a select committee in 2010:

Q16 Andrea Leadsom: Secondly, Governor, a long time ago, 15 years ago, I had the dubious privilege of working with your predecessor over a weekend to stop a run on the banking system when Barings went bust due to derivatives trading at the time during the post mortem period afterwards. It was largely agreed that directors of banks and the Governor did not know enough about derivatives, hence my question, and I am not sure that we are still quite there as yet, but my question is very specifically one of accountability. When I had that pleasure, I was running the investment team at Barclays

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmtreasy/430i/uc430i.htm

She now denies that she ever claimed to be a funds manager. The ex-CEO of Barings says he's never heard of her.

When I listened to her going on about babies, I had a feeling that something was wrong. This is what the first Clinical Director of the charity Leadsom set up with her brother-in-law's money writes:

In 2011 when I took a voluntary redundancy from the NHS I was asked to help set up a parenting charity* focusing on the period from conception to age 2. I agreed to be the founding Clinical Director and to help them set policies, sort out pathways of treatment and recruit staff. I worked for them one day per week. After less than six months it was clear that there was a divergence between what I felt was most clinically helpful to say about supporting parents in this critical period and the primary goals of the charity...

I felt, cynically perhaps, that there was a second agenda designed to promote the MP who founded the project and her political party which was of more importance than our clinical goals, although this was never explicit.

clinpsyeye.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/high-on-scare-low-on-science-a-tale-of-charity-politics-and-dodgy-neuroscience/

So why should this be a political matter? (IDS was also at this launch.) Firstly, because it promotes Leadsom as a founder of a charity, which looks good on a CV. Secondly, there's pressure (from her and IDS) to transfer funding from teenagers to babies. Whilst that seems a laudable aim, there is much evidence that the people who use the charity tend to be middle-class and relatively wealthy - they have to pay for consultations. Thirdly, the charity charges quite substantial fees for training courses. Fourthly, it's bad science. Camila Batmanghelidjh promotes it too and charges hefty fees for people to listen to her (at least she did before Kids' Company closed down). I think MPs (and others) are mesmerised by strong characters when they talk about babies.

Andrea Leadsom wants to bring back hunting with hounds. Sadly that will get her some Tory votes.

The awful sense of foreboding I have had for the last six weeks has not gone away. Just when we thought things couldn't get much worse we are faced with the prospect of this dreadful person actually becoming prime minister.

If there are any conservative members on GN, please give your support to Theresa May.

I fear the crusty colonels in the Shires will think she(Leadsom)'s a "dem attractive gel" approve of her "Christian marriage " line, welcome the return of hunting with hounds, be influenced by Boris Johnson's support and be hoodwinked into a train crash decision.
I am very afraid. May may not be perfect but I would always rate experience above dodgy posturing.

Is this the first time we've had a change of PM when the government will be in power for a set 5 years?

Philip Collins's writing is rather good, isn't it, dd? I've only discovered him recently.

The Labour Party has always given the vote for leader to members thstbags so not Milliband

I think the £3 membership so that one could vote in a leadership election was brought in my Miliband in 2014. That's what I'd understood from stuff I've read anyway. Could be wrong.