At the very top end of politics there is a vital distinction that is underappreciated whenever the case for change is being assessed. It is the difference between plausible and compelling. Tony Blair in his pomp was the latter, Gordon Brown never more than the former.
Margaret Thatcher had only to be plausible to win the 1979 election against a broken Labour Party. But once she had overseen the liberation of the Falkland Islands in 1982 she became compelling and two further election wins followed, each by a landslide margin.
The case for leaving the EU became plausible after the Lisbon Treaty was steamrollered through without a promised referendum to be swiftly followed by a crisis in the eurozone which highlighted its basic design flaws. But it only became compelling when Nigel Farage’s force of personality ripped the Eurosceptic conversation out of the cosy confines of the Tory party. Once Boris Johnson’s own huge persona had been attached to an iron will to implement Brexit in the teeth of establishment resistance, he became a compelling figure too and millions of people who normally paid little attention to politics decided he was a leader they could follow.
Over the next fortnight or so, many Conservative MPs will run plausibility tests in their heads when assessing the merits of the various leadership candidates – how many years have they spent running which Whitehall departments, can they speak the language of inoffensive platitudes by which conventional political leaders communicate, would they look right were they the person shaking hands on behalf of Britain with a US President on the steps of the White House?
Despite the barbs of leftist commentators, most of those candidates have such plausibility.
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