Forget Boris, it's Gove vs Hunt

Consider this scenario. Boris is one of the final two and wins the leadership election in the party-at-large on a policy of Brexit for sure (I think this means on WTO terms or something like it). Parliament doesn't agree and passes a no-confidence motion. There is an election.

A wavering-leave Tory Party is squeezed between the Brexit Party .. and the Labour and Liberal Parties, all of whom come out for Remain. They hoover up the votes of Conservative Remainers. Despite all of Boris's alleged rabble-rousing charms, the Tories are decimated: welcome to the new Lib-Lab-SNP government.

If Boris prevaricates in October, the Brexit Party continues to grow: a slow motion version of the above.

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Boris is not the strategic thinker to get out of this hole. Logically therefore, he should not be one of the final two.

Hunt is surely the Remainers best bet. Smart, media-friendly, politically adroit.

He met with Trump - normally the mark of a supposed-winner.

Gove, once he gets past his immediate Class-A difficulties, is more Brexiteer-friendly, more ballot credible, a sop to the party-faithful. His problem is that he's too cerebral for these populist times. He doesn't look like a prime-minister: he's better cast as best-friend.

So logically, the process should return Gove-Hunt for the further party-ballot in the hope that either of them has the intellectual and political skills to navigate the very survival of the Tories where no solution currently presents itself.

Will Tory MPs see it that way, or will they panic and put Boris on the list - hope against hope that empty charisma will by some magic pull them through?

See the title of this post.

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Note: this is an analysis of the best options for an intelligent Tory party interested in long-term survival. It does not represent my personal opinions as to who would be best PM.

None of the above would be a start.

National characteristics and MBTI type

In the previous post I mentioned that Theresa May came across as an ISTJ, and that this resonated with ordinary folk. I was sufficiently interested to google the subject of national character and found this.

Obviously countries present different facets of themselves - different national stereotypes - but it isn't completely arbitrary: the stereotypes do have force, a ring of truth. The methodology one instinctively applies is to think of an individual who seems to embody the character of a country, and then personality-type him or her.

For England, ISTJ seems pretty apposite but I think we need to differentiate between the 'England profonde' - England in the large - and the metropolitan and cosmopolitan elites primarily located in London, who are effectively inhabitants of a different country (the so-called 'anywheres').

ISTJ is indeed the type of 'John Bull', the quintessential English person, but the transnational London-elites are much more like George Osborne, an INTJ, or Tony Blair, an ENTP. So in Keirsey's language, those globalist politicians dealing in economics abstractions and cool self-interested logic are Rationals.

The average English person, concrete to the core, has always distrusted intellectuals 😑. One way of understanding the recent turmoil in the Conservative party is to observe that control has passed from that faction which was the government of London (as the UK-based outpost of the global elite) to the faction which considers itself the government of England, tolerating London as a financial entrepôt.

Theresa May is often, pejoratively, called provincial.

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America has numerous distinctive national stereotypes. In political terms, the coastal policy elites (as represented, say, by Hillary Clinton, an INTJ), are plainly NT-Rational. Trump, a clear ESTP, represents the disinhibited force of nature we're familiar with from Westerns; the blustering and authoritarian 'Big Man', impatient with formal authority and rules, demanding personal loyalty. In this he reflects the yearning values of his mostly working-class base, which I visualise predominantly as STJs.

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The EU leadership is part of the global, neoliberal cosmopolitan elite, and so NT-Rational. Emmanuel Macron is a personification of this type, as is the French elite. Beneath the surface, European countries diverge: Germany has, in Angela Merkel's public persona, a profound embodiment of the German national character - very STJ; France en masse, like the other Latin countries, inclines more SFP.

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Does any of this matter? Yes: when interests fracture in a country, national types are strongly predictive of values, which then lend direction to political movements.

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For more about the Myers-Briggs personality scheme, look to the link on the upper right sidebar.

The SDP is not much of a model

I assume that nothing is now going to stop the Corbyn/Momentum group capturing the party machinery and reconstructing the PLP in its own image.

This may be the work of a year or two, but the issue which interests me is .. what then?

Specifically, how stable and durable is the movement which is currently funnelling hundreds of thousands of new members into the party?

My guess is not very. Momentum folk seem to be amateur, lifestyle activists - their involvement in politics faute de mieux. Something else will come along in due course.

I don't think the 'brand loyal' Labour voters, the 21% of the broader electorate, will necessarily stay on board during the forthcoming flight into terrain. Regular, non-PC working folk are being explicitly targeted by Theresa May's new model conservatives but that's a complex project for the Tories - it's eminently contestable.

Trouble is, there are no leading cadres in the Labour party who are even interested.

A clear political programme or manifesto would be a good start.