It is doubtless bad manners to ask, on day two of his new job, what he will do next. But posing the question and trying to answer it is irresistible.
CCHQ has been taken to task elsewhere for imposing lists of candidates on seats with no connection to it. It certainly hasn’t done so in this case.
Among our readers as a whole the majority for doing so is more narrow.
The more he leaks, the slower May will be to put anything on the table. And the slower she is to do so, the slower the negotiation will proceed – from which everyone loses.
Two in three are opposed. The finding is part of nearly five thousand replies, our biggest-ever reader response.
Two in three of them favour this change. One in three remain opposed. Who said Tory members always oppose liberalising measures?
The selections in the two Tory-held seats to date have both been won by women; and there is at least one woman on the shortlist of every such seat yet to select.
The former fear that it will revive what they believe are business-unfriendly ideas about foreign takeovers and workers on boards.
That the pursuit of Farron was legitimate doesn’t mean that they, or anyone else, should feel happy about it – or the bigger trends of which it was part.
Labour won the constituency by 1,138 votes in 2015 and by 42 in 2010, so this is unquestionably a target seat.
Meanwhile, UKIP’s anti-Muslim programme is so transparent a piece of Vice Signalling as to scarcely be worth further comment.
The established parties have lost their grip on this contest, but their hold on other parts of the country’s system remains strong.
The more likely Tory voters see headline figures like these, the less likely they are to turn out to vote.
That’s the head of the Downing Street Policy Unit, the Chair of May’s Policy Board, the most important Minister you’ve never heard of…and our former columnist.
This election follows a referendum that strained, and in some cases shattered, party loyalties. The Prime Minister ought now to be building her own big tent.