Theresa May is Prime Minister and the sense of relief is palpable, even among those who have doubts about what she will do in office. You would have to be obsessively partisan and grumpy not to at least recognise that she is a grown-up and in turbulent times she brings a degree of stability. More, for all the sniggering from liberals in the American media and elsewhere about the chaos of recent weeks, what has just happened is classically British. A period of absolute bedlam and low farce has been halted by a ruthless assertion of power by May and the machinery of the British State kicking in to do its thing.
The attention will now be on the cabinet and the key appointments. How bold will May be? Who will she sack? What happens to Osborne? Will the Tory party finally return to having proper party chairmen?
But as attention shifts to the future it is worth reflecting for a moment on what has just happened. An entire leadership generation of top Tories who have dominated their party for more than a decade and governed for six years has just been wiped out. It is an extraordinary act of political self-harm. It is incredible. It is mind-boggling.
Six months ago David Cameron was dominant. He had saved the Union and won an election, returning the Tory party to a majority position.
George Osborne readied himself for the succession. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson worked to overtake Osborne. The great reformer Michael Gove weighed his options ahead of the referendum. Other ministers, MPs, chums and advisers who had hitched their wagons to the Cameron/Osborne project bustled around enjoying power or proximity to power.
Underneath them, a whole social network – with its own manners, assumptions and habits – whirred away in London and nice parts of the home counties at weekends.
It is all turned to dust now. There’ll be some memoirs and some juicy tales of referendum shenanigans, but not that much of it will be worth the purchase price. It’s history that will fascinate hacks like me and a few others. But that’s the point. The group that only recently dominated British politics is now history.
At a party I saw the sister of one of those involved in the referendum wars the other night and she looked quite honestly as though her world had just been blown up. It has been.
