I am honoured and humbled to have been chosen by the Conservative Party to become its leader.

We're going to give people more control over their lives.

And that's how, together, we will build a better Britain.

Thank you.

Welcome to a special edition of a Spectator podcast.

That was Theresa May, who's just been named Britain's next Prime Minister.

Her last remaining rival, Andrea Ledson, dropped out this morning after saying she felt

she couldn't command the support of her fellow MPs.

I'm Fraser Nelson, and I'm joined by my colleagues Isabel Hardman and James Forsyfe to discuss

what surely must be the end to the most extraordinary period of British political drama in living memory.

Now James, do you think Andrea Ledson was right to drop out of the race?

I mean, it was the Tory party members she needed to win over to her side.

She dropped out because she said

the MPs couldn't work with her. Was that the right decision? I think she was right because what

happened was Theresa May got 6% plus of the MPs. If Andrea Ledson was consolidating kind of the roughly,

I think it's about 35 to 40% of MPs who didn't vote for Theresa May, then she might well have

been a viable Prime Minister. What was happening was that most of the people who voted for Michael Gove were moving over

to the Theresa May camp.

So she really would have been quite an isolated figure in the leading the party.

And I think the other problem is this is she just simply wasn't ready for this level of

scrutiny and exposure.

She had been a junior minister for two years. That does not prepare you for the level of scrutiny and exposure. You know, she had been a junior minister for two years.

...