Alex Massie
Boris Johnson: a comfort zone leader
The selection of a new prime minister, even when the exercise is conducted without the endorsing legitimacy of a general election, is supposed to be accompanied by something approaching a frisson of anticipation, even hope. A new beginning; a resetting of politics; a fresh sense of possibility. Not so on this occasion. The race to replace Theresa May is instead filled with foreboding, the grim sense that matters will have to get worse before they can get better. Britain today is not a land that still believes in a place called hope. Incentives remain cruelly misaligned.