Dear All,

Britain will soon have a new prime minister, and who this is to be will be decided by the Conservative party. This is because Theresa May finally announced her departure on the 24th of last month, following her latest unsuccessful attempt to get parliament to agree on another version of her ‘Brexit deal’. She had to withdraw this bill as her Leader in the Commons, Andrea Leadsom, resigned dramatically just the night before the bill was to be presented to the house. In her resignation speech May tried to outline her achievements, and right at the end became slightly emotional and on her closing sentence her voice broke as she choked back tears; she then quickly turned and walked back into Downing Street. Finally! Is what many commentators said because May has never shown much emotion -- in fact The Guardian sketch writer John Crace refers to her routinely as "Maybot".

And "finally" is provably what the contenders for Tory party leadership must have said too. These ambitious individuals have been jostling to oust her almost all through her entire tenure, and their number includes Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. Johnson, the tousled blond former Mayor of London, former editor of The Spectator as well as The Telegraph columnist, seems to be the front runner according to a recent poll. He is the hot favourite in a race in which some contenders have already declared their intention, but nearly every day a new candidate emerges.

The Conservative party will choose the new leader through a process involving several stages of balloting by their MPs, the candidate with the least support will be removed until just two candidates are left. Once two candidates are decided by MPs the Party’s 150,000 members will vote to choose the winner.

So far the declared candidates are of a variety of hues both politically and ethnically and include Home Secretary Sajid Javid (brown, Pakistani origin) and the Brexit minister James Cleverly (black, mixed race). A former diplomat Rory Stewart is also a contender and he keeps telling us that what is needed in the current situation is somebody with diplomatic skills. He talks often about his years in Iraq and Afghanistan, and recently posted a video of himself speaking to an Afghan man in Dari. Stewart looks like a boyish version of what Mick Jagger might have been had he been a university professor. Almost every day some new contender declares their intention and now the nation is again gripped by this drama as it unfolds.

This drama also included the news that Boris Johnson must appear in court to face the accusation that while holding public office he lied in order to sway public opinion on Brexit. The accusation is related to his claim during the Brexit campaign that "Britain paid £350 million each week to be in the European Union". This false claim was also displayed on a Vote Leave campaign bus which went around the country. The case has been brought to court by somebody who raised more than £350,000 through crowdfunding in order to fund this effort.

The Tory leadership drama follows close on the heels of the EU assembly election where both the Conservatives and Labour did very badly. The Tories were in fifth position, with the Brexit Party, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party way ahead of them. The Brexit Party is another creation of Nigel Farage, the former UKIP leader, and the man who will forever be associated with the Brexit Leave campaign. He claims that the Brexit Party can now even win a general election as these polls show how fed up people are with the two main parties. A general election remains a possibility but looks unlikely to happen. Meanwhile Labour is caught up in its own dramas: Tony Blair’s former aide Alastair Campbell was expelled from the party after he stated that he had voted Lib Dem in these polls, and the deputy leader of the party, Tom Watson, continues to undermine the leader, Jeremy Corbyn by repeatedly issuing statements contradicting or rejecting Corbyn’s. Oh, and also the party is now to be investigated by The Equality and Human Rights Commission over its handling of anti-semitism…

The political landscape is confusingly altered, British politics as we knew it is now in turmoil…

Best wishes,