It’s the conference season speculation

The Prime Minister will hope BoJo stays at home

Prime Minister Theresa May delivers her keynote speech at the Conservative Party Conference in 2017. Ahead of this year’s event her time as leader looks to be coming to an end and the question on everyone’s lips is: ‘who will replace her?’ THE political parties and their leaders get a few days each year when they are guaranteed to be the centre of attention.

These are the party conferences. MPs, councillors and party activists head off to a big city or a seaside town for three or four days to hold debates, socialise and, sometimes, make decisions.

But that doesn’t guarantee you’re going to get the coverage you want.

What we remember about Theresa May’s speech at last year’s Conservative conference was her coughing fit and a comedian attempting to hand her a P45.

What’s more, party leaders don’t have total control over events.

Boris Johnson will be attending the Conservative conference this year, and there will be a lot of discussion about whether he would make a better Prime Minister than Mrs May. She would no-doubt prefer him to stay at home.

And the Labour conference is likely to include debate about whether to hold a second referendum on Brexit - even though the party leadership currently appear to oppose one.

The Liberal Democrats are holding their conference in Brighton, and it began yesterday.

Big issues will include leader Vince Cable’s plan to transform the party into a “movement of moderates”. That includes inviting people who aren’t members to help the Lib Dems choose a new leader.

The next week, Labour hold their conference in Liverpool.

Controversial issues will include Labour’s Democracy Review, designed to hand more power to party members.

And the party will discuss “mandatory reselection” of MPs, a policy which supporters call “open selection”. This would involve forcing sitting MPs to go through a selection process whenever there is an election, so other people have the chance to apply to be Labour’s candidate.

Tories, meeting the week after that, are likely to argue about the type of Brexit they want, with some MPs and members opposed to Prime Minister Theresa May’s proposals.

And everyone will be aware that Mrs May is likely to stand down as party leader, or to be kicked out by her fellow Conservative MPs.

She probably won’t go until some time after we leave the EU, on March 29 next year.

Even so, a question people will be asking when the Tories hold their conference in Birmingham is this: who should replace her?