Speak to any disaffected Tory these days and the conversation quickly turns to one of leadership. Who should be next to wear the Conservative crown? Rishi? Damaged goods. Liz? Always self-promoting. Jeremy Hunt? Come off it. With question marks hanging over each of the main contenders, one name increasingly doing the rounds is that of dark horse Nadhim Zahawi, the millionaire businessman whose supporters bill him as the man who gets things done.
The case for Zahawi goes as follows: he came to this nation an immigrant child yet built the hugely successful YouGov polling firm. After years of being overlooked for high office, he oversaw the successful vaccine roll-out at health before cleaning up the hapless Gavin Williamson’s mess at education. True, he may have had the odd brush with scandal, his supporters claim, but what’s a little fuss over the taxpayer heating your stables when you deliver on the things that matter?
Still, Mr S gently suggests Zahawi might want to ensure his civil servants get that memo, given their underwhelming performance in the delivery of promised commemorative books to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. The Department for Education announced in May 2021 that a copy would be given to all primary school pupils, as part of a procurement process with £12million in funding. But over a year on, more than half the promised books had still not arrived with their recipients a fortnight after the Jubilee, an event for which they’ve had, er, 70 years’ notice.
The government said the books would be arriving from mid-May 2022 but, according to a parliamentary answer, fewer than one in eight (12 per cent) of primary school pupils had received the books by the Jubilee. More than two weeks on, half the books still hasn’t been delivered by 20 June, with 52.9 per cent remaining undelivered as of that date.
Steerpike is a fan of Zahawi’s talents but after one leader whose rhetoric was better than his delivery, can the Tories quite afford another?
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