Elected or not, Theresa May was always the best candidate for PM

The new leader’s proven competence at a time of acute national challenge arguably overrides the lack of a personal mandate

Why am I not alarmed at the prospect of Theresa May becoming prime minister this week without a contested leadership election, let alone a general election, when Gordon Brown’s similar “coronation” in 2007 left me full of foreboding?

Two reasons stand out. The most important is that the British state faces an existential crisis by virtue of 23 June’s slender majority to withdraw from the EU. It desperately needed to fill the power vacuum created by David Cameron’s refusal to stick around and sweep up the broken glass from his reckless referendum gamble.

Continue reading...