Will Theresa lead the Out tribe?

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[/audioplayer]Who is the most politically interesting member of David Cameron’s cabinet? There’s a good case to be made for Michael Gove. He is as intent on reforming the justice system as he was our schools. If he succeeds, it will be the biggest transformation in Britain’s approach to criminal justice since the Roy Jenkins years. The prison population will begin to fall.

Or you could pick George Osborne, who has to maintain his position as the heir apparent, reposition the Tories as the workers’ party and at the same time preside over billions of pounds’ worth of cuts. Or there’s Liz Truss and Sajid Javid, secretaries of state who have delighted Downing Street by approaching the spending review with their Free Enterprise Group radicalism.

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Matthew Parris

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But the most politically interesting member of the cabinet right now is Theresa May. At first, this seems an odd choice. May has already been Home Secretary for five years and has no radical second-term agenda for the department. In Downing Street and among her cabinet colleagues the view is that her leadership moment has passed. They point out that by the time the contest begins she will be in her sixties. She won’t be the only female candidate in the race either; the Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has made clear that she will stand, family issues permitting.

What makes May so interesting, though, is her resolve to reduce immigration—and where that commitment might lead her. Other Tories dismiss their party’s stated aim of bringing immigration down to tens of thousands a year as silly and unachievable, but May believes in it. She meant what she said in her conference speech about high levels of immigration making it ‘impossible to build a cohesive society’.