Kit Malthouse’s entry into the Conservative leadership contest has created quite a problem for the other candidates, not so much because he appears to offer a serious threat to the more established campaigns, but because he is the architect of the ‘Malthouse Compromise’, which once promised to solve all of Theresa May’s Brexit problems. The trouble with the Malthouse Compromise is that its name includes a now highly-toxic C-word. Theresa May used ‘compromise’ so much in the weeks before she finally gave up and announced she was resigning that no leadership candidate worth their salt wants to drop it into conversation now.
Even those who think that the best way through the Brexit deadlock really will involve a lot of compromise know they can’t use that word. ‘It’s too toxic now,’ says one leadership candidate. ‘You’ll hear us all trying to talk about how we are a pragmatic party instead, as otherwise we’ll just get members thinking about Theresa May, which isn’t going to help.’
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