Will Nicky Morgan be the next Prime Minister?

When David Cameron announced that he wouldn’t serve a third term, he made it inevitable that Westminster would spend much of his second term wondering about who would succeed him. Well, in the new Spectator, Nicky Morgan becomes the first Cabinet Minister to make clear that she is interested in standing when Cameron steps down. She says that ‘A lot of it will depend on family’ but makes clear that she believes there needs to be a female candidate in the race and hopes ‘that, in the not too distant future, there will be another female leader of a main Westminster political party’.

What I was most struck about when interviewing Morgan was how, when I asked her what her pitch for the top would be, she didn’t shy away from the question. Instead, she offered up a manifesto based on her experience in turning her seat, Loughborough, from a marginal into one with a Tory majority of more than 9,000:

‘I represent a part of the country that I think is incredibly down-to-earth.