There’s a reason why Conservative prime ministers are so bad
Why does the Conservative party keep appointing such terrible leaders to become prime minister? There are actually some clear, structural reasons why this keeps happening, and the party could prevent it.
I have written plenty of times over these last years about how the British prime minister just couldn’t get worse. It’s been one of my least accurate predictions.
I quite liked David Cameron. He seemed like a nice enough guy. Looking at him, you could easily believe he was the prime minister of a relatively serious country. He made some big mistakes, but very much in the style of an otherwise credible political leader.
He oversaw ‘austerity’ which caused misery for many and laid the seeds for productivity in the UK to fall progressively ever since, crushing economic growth. By not investing in infrastructure, or in people, he made the country less productive and damaged the economy. His other obvious mistake was to call a referendum on remaining in the EU. This was not a major concern for most people but had been dividing his own political party for years, and he thought that offering a referendum would put a stop to this infighting and get his party under control. How wrong that was.
Then we had Theresa May. She was a weak leader who threw away a large…
