For the sake of the party and Britain it must be May

SINCE day one of the referendum campaign, the Conservative party has seemed bent on tearing itself apart. Internecine warfare began the instant the starting gun was fired and has, if anything, intensified since the British people took the momentous decision to quit the EU.

There has been treachery and vicious animosity – some of it between people who until recently were close allies. It’s been bad for the party, bad for government (which has been in virtual paralysis for months) and above all, bad for the country.

Today, Tory MPs can take an important step towards healing the party’s wounds as they begin the process of choosing a new prime minister to lead Britain into an exciting future freed from the shackles of Brussels.

They meet for the first round of voting in the leadership election and will soon whittle the five candidates down to two, with the final decision to be made by the wider membership.

All five runners have their merits but as the Mail said in this column last Friday, we believe Theresa May stands head and shoulders above the rest.

She’s a genuine one-nation Tory with a strong track record both as party chairman and in the notoriously difficult role of Home Secretary, which she has performed with enormous credit for six years.

As a vicar’s daughter, she had no gilded upbringing – going through state primary and grammar schools to win a place at Oxford – and has a formidable reputation for hard work and plain speaking. She belongs to no political clique, has no obvious cronies and promises to usher in a cleaner, more honest kind of politics.

Thanks to those qualities, Mrs May enters today’s first round with the support of well over 100 MPs, including no fewer than ten cabinet ministers.

And she underlines her wealth of experience in today’s Mail with a reminder that she has been in charge of counter-terrorism since 2010 and at times of high alert has chaired the government’s Cobra emergency committee. She warns that we are under threat not only from Islamic State fanaticism but also a belligerent nuclear power in Russia and its posturing president Vladimir Putin. She would demand that work on a Trident replacement – shamefully delayed by government stasis caused by the referendum – should begin immediately.

And who would argue that defence of the realm must be a leader’s top priority? In an increasingly dangerous world, we must have a viable deterrent – and a prime minister with the maturity and experience to see it is properly controlled.

It’s true of course that Mrs May tacitly supported the Remain campaign out of loyalty to David Cameron. But she’s a natural eurosceptic and now says categorically that ‘Brexit means Brexit’. She has no intention of trying to delay or prevent Britain’s departure from the EU.

As to the other candidates, the Mail has long admired the intellectual abilities of Michael Gove but until recently even he himself insisted he was not endowed with the leadership qualities necessary for the top job. Andrea Leadsom is a star of the future who last night won the backing of erstwhile frontrunner Boris Johnson. But after just six years as an MP, she lacks experience (and faces uncomfortable questions over her tax affairs). The other two – Liam Fox and Stephen Crabb – seem unlikely to gain enough support.

Tory MPs bear a huge responsibility in this election. We would urge them to choose the one candidate who can reunite both the party and our dangerously fractured nation while also injecting renewed vigour and passion into a Government which has been in suspended animation for far too long.

As we said on Friday, those referendum wounds are still raw, the markets jittery and – with Westminster in utter turmoil across all parties – the future uncertain. What Britain needs is someone who can provide a solid and steady hand on the tiller.

This paper wholeheartedly believes that must be Theresa May.