If you are in the market for narratives of Conservative revival, there is a semi-plausible one on offer from most of that party’s MPs. It goes something like this: the government emerges from the Brexit negotiations with a deal that delivers a gentle transition, the economy avoids a serious recession and the parliament runs until its expiry date of June 2022. By then, Jeremy Corbyn will have been in place for almost seven years and will have lost some of his radical chic, in contrast to the new Tory leader – “Candidate X” – who will win a small but workable parliamentary majority.
The difficulty is that no one can agree on who Candidate X might be. In contemplative moments, Conservative MPs reflect on their situation two years ago after David Cameron announced that he would not contest a third general election and the party’s thoughts inevitably turned to the succession. Back then, Tories believed they had an embarrassment of riches: not only George Osborne, Cameron’s preferred heir, but Boris Johnson and Theresa May, the up-and-coming cabinet ministers Sajid Javid, Stephen Crabb and Amber Rudd, and promising backbenchers such as Dominic Raab.
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