Future of the Conservative Party

[The Man From G.O.P.]

At this point, what do you think will happen in the next ten years?

Questions I wish to know your opinion on:

If Cameron loses in the next General Election, who will lead the party?

Will Gordon Brown win party leadership for the elections, or will there be a significant challenge?

Future of:

David Cameron
Tony Blair
Gordon Brown
William Hague
Oliver Letwin

Please satisfy me with your opinions.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

At this point, what do you think will happen in the next ten years?

Questions I wish to know your opinion on:

If Cameron loses in the next General Election, who will lead the party?

No clue; probably another Michael Howard\William Hague type conservative

Will Gordon Brown win party leadership for the elections, or will there be a significant challenge?

Easily; the only challenge right now seems to come from the far-left, and we all know how that will end up. Gordon Brown is 99.9% certain of being the next PM - the .1% is for "unforseen events".

Future of:

David Cameron:
Ideally, a chat show host - he'll be quite good at that. Oh, and possibly the next Prime Minister thingy too
Tony Blair:
Retires after the next election to a great big media hagiography, then goes on the lecturing\media-politics circuit still trying to find justification for Iraq till the end of days
Gordon Brown:
Becomes PM sometime in 2007, does not change policy radically from TB, except giving some more sops to the left and generally a projection of being more populist than Blair - how well he will go down depends on a great many things
William Hague:
If Andrew Bonar Law was the forgotten Prime Minister; then William Hague is the forgotten Tory leader. I imagine he'll be seen in the way Michael Foot is now seen (obviously, from the other end of the spectrum - though Hague is less right then Foot was left imo.)
Oliver Letwin:
Don't really care, he's a bit of a twit (Actually, the 'I' there is the wrong vowel) really

Please satisfy me with your opinions.

[Michael Z]

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Cameron will stay as leader. He's young and was voted in to stay for the long haul. The Tories are realists enough to know they can't overturn Labour's sizeable majority in one election.

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It'll be a "coronation", ie. any prospective or credible rival will either be bought off or intimidated into not running. A case in point being the vast bulk of people running for the deputy leadership instead.

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Either Prime Minister come 2009-10/2013-15 or a Kinnock-esque also ran.

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College lecture circuit in the US.

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Prime Minister, then college lecture circuit in the US.

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May have a shot a running for the leadership again should Cameron leave/resign. Could still fulfil his lifetime ambition of becoming Prime Minister (by which point I hopefully should have emigrated to Canada).

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Columnist for the Times.

[merseysider]

David Cameron: has a reasonable chance of winning the next election (our majority of 66 looks robust, but then look how many Labour marginals there are with majorities of less than a thousand votes...). If he doesn't do it, but comes close, I think he could probably stay on as leader. I think his biggest problem at the moment is actually that he's made a good start, meaning that expectations of him are very high.

Tony Blair: Rather like Bill Clinton - he won't take on any formal position, but he'll be a regular fixture at lectures and conferences. Knowing how fickle the British public and media are, and their general belief that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, I've no doubt that a year from now everyone will be saying they wish he'd stayed on. And just for once, they'll actually be right.

Gordon Brown: yes, he'll be PM, but I'm not entirely sure how long for. I have definite doubts about him, which I won't go into at length here, but I think he could be to the Labour Party what Paul Martin was to the Canadian Liberals.

William Hague: I think he could still become PM. He's older and wiser now, and is working quite effectively as their shadow Foreign Secretary. I think he'll gradually shed the 'Tory Boy' image.

Oliver Letwin: I don't think we'll see much more of him - he's already stepped back from front line politics in order to spend more time with his wallet. He works part time for an investment bank and could probably make a fortune working full time in the private sector.

As regards the leadership elections, Gordon will almost certainly win, probably by default. He doesn't actually have many genuine supporters but there are loads of people supporting him because they think he's going to win and they're scared of being on the losing side.

I really, really hope that John Reid stands - I would throw myself into campaigning for him.

I actually think that if a few high-profile people had the bottle to stand against Gordon Brown, they would find that the leadership is asking for the taking. I think it's pathetic seeing everyone and his dog lining up to stand for the deputy leadership (an utterly pointless post) rather than having the guts to go for the big prize.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If Cameron loses in the next General Election, who will lead the party?

Presumably still Cameron

Will Gordon Brown win party leadership for the elections, or will there be a significant challenge?

The chances of him facing a serious challenge for the post are pretty remote now.

David Cameron

Leader of the Opposition for a while, possible P.M at some point (but that's far from certain).
If his career goes belly-up, daytime TV o/c.

Tony Blair

The lecture circuit etc.

Gordon Brown

Prime Minister for a few years at least

William Hague

I suspect that his career might come to a sticky end, but that's just a hunch. Then again I never did like him; one of the most over-rated politicians of the past few decades IMO.

Oliver Letwin

Hopefully he sinks without a trace, never to be remembered but by political junkies.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

As regards the leadership elections, Gordon will almost certainly win, probably by default. He doesn't actually have many genuine supporters but there are loads of people supporting him because they think he's going to win and they're scared of being on the losing side.

I really, really hope that John Reid stands - I would throw myself into campaigning for him.

I actually think that if a few high-profile people had the bottle to stand against Gordon Brown, they would find that the leadership is asking for the taking. I think it's pathetic seeing everyone and his dog lining up to stand for the deputy leadership (an utterly pointless post) rather than having the guts to go for the big prize.

Or they could be thinking strategically.  No matter who the next leader is, Labour will at the very least lose seats and could well lose power.  They may be wishing to be the Labour leader who brought the party back to power instead of risking being  the one that lost his first general election.

[afleitch]

If Gordon Brown leads the Labour party and the country, without any genuine challenge then David Cameron will be a cert to become PM after an election is called. People say they want substance over style when history tells us the direct opposite is true. What's odd is that Labour, I believe, don't really want Gordon as leader, and the people don't really want him as PM but they have no other choice.