In the weeks following the Brexit vote, the drama is far from over as politicians scramble to weather the storm and come out on top.
The biggest faces of the Leave campaign, Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, have both jumped ship, with the former stepping down as leader of the UK Independence Party, and the other, once the favourite to succeed Prime Minister David Cameron, announced that he had no plans to seek the position. This was a shock to many, including Johnson himself, who had been preparing to announce his run just moments before, if not for the betrayal that he had just been made aware of. Michael Gove, an old friend of Johnson and presumed campaign chair, announced that he was running himself.
Nonetheless the new front-runner is Home Secretary Theresa May, who has a substantial lead in the ongoing leadership vote over Gove, in addition to Andrea Leadsom, whom Johnson has since decided to endorse.
Betrayal is not unique to the right this summer however, as it has also struck the supposedly left-leaning Labour Party. More than three-quarters of the party’s MP’s went against leader Jeremy Corbyn, now obviously one of the few socialists remaining in Westminster, during a no-confidence vote. Despite this abysmal result, Corbyn, who still maintains the support of the much larger pool of Labour voters, has no intention to stand down, and will run in the upcoming leadership contest triggered by the vote. It’s not clear if he will win with as wide a margin as last fall, if at all, but it is clear that unlike Farage, Johnson, or even David Cameron, he has no intention of running away.
And that is perhaps the most unexpected development of all.
Further reading:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36702468
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/30/goves-thunderbolt-boris-johnson-tory-morning
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/28/jeremy-corbyn-loses-labour-mps-confidence-vote
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/04/labour-coup-disastrous-jeremy-corbyn
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/04/labour-differences-dont-justify-party-tearing-apart
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/05/conservative-mps-start-voting-in-leadership-contest
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