Once again, he political classes have turned in on themselves, playing their dire games instead of getting on with the job for which they are paid.

By Dr Richard North and cross-posted from EUReferendum.com

Just about everybody’s at it, homing in on Mrs May who is expected today to announce the date of her departure from Downing Street. Monday, 10 June is widely forecast as being the start of the leadership contest, after the state visit from President Trump and the Peterborough by-election.

Once again, therefore, the political classes have turned in on themselves, playing their dire games instead of getting on with the job for which they are paid. By way of a consolation prize for the Brexit we should have had but haven’t got, we have a vast spectator sport called “guess the new leader”, as the Westminster bubble takes time out to focus on its own concerns.

And, of course, it is a spectator sport. Unless you are a fully paid-up member of the Conservative Party – one of a tiny minority – you don’t get a say in who is to be the leader of the government in one of the most critical periods in the country’s history.

And then, even in that privileged position, you only get to vote on the pickings of three hundred or so Tory MPs, who will do their best to ensure they control the selection process, the net effect being that no one, at this stage, is able to predict who will be in the final run-off.

In what amounts to a thoroughly undemocratic process, the one small consolation is that the MPs may at least act as a filter to block the loathsome Johnson being put to the wider membership. Left to the rank and file members, they would probably vote for this creature. He has long been their favourite…

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