Evening Standard comment: Emily Thornberry could be the next female PM

Here's a thought that will get some Tories spluttering over their afternoon tea: Emily Thornberry is well placed to be the country’s third female Prime Minister.

The Islington South MP’s robust interview in the Evening Standard, on the eve of the Labour Party Conference, reminds us why.

First, and most obviously, Ms Thornberry is right at the top of the Opposition. She is the shadow foreign secretary, she deputises for her party at Prime Minister’s Questions, and will be omnipresent in Liverpool next week: she tells us, without drawing breath, that she is giving “17 speeches” there.

Second, she is close to Jeremy Corbyn without being a Corbynista. She calls her constituency neighbour “completely lovely”, “Zen” even, but makes it clear that she regularly disagrees with him.

She has stayed out of all the far-Left shenanigans over the machinery of the Labour Party, saying in her disarming way that it’s a “blessing” she’s not on the ruling NEC and, frankly, has other “stuff to do”. She’s a member of the beleaguered Labour Friends of Israel, and — truth be told — she could easily have been a New Labour Cabinet Minister under Messrs Blair and Brown if she had entered Parliament a generation earlier.

Third, she has character and profile in an age when even Labour MPs couldn’t tell you who most of the shadow cabinet are. Her performances on BBC Question Time, and in interviews, are sparky and irreverent.

Most of Parliament, and now the EU, thinks the Prime Minister’s Chequers plan “is bollocks” — she has the gumption to say so in her interview today.

She also has the tactical astuteness to make it clear Labour won’t fall for the false choice Mrs May is trying to create of “my way or no deal”. As we report today, the Cabinet is also backing away.

Snobbish Tory MPs delight in calling her “Lady Nugee”, because she’s married to a judge and her father was a senior UN official — but the truth is her upbringing was in a broken home that relied on free school meals.

She’s put behind her the misstep when she disdainfully tweeted a picture of a house in Rochester festooned in Cross of St George flags — although a political weakness remains an apparent metropolitan disdain for the prejudices of the general populace.

Finally, she is a woman — and a Labour movement that claims to champion equality has never elected a female leader (although Mses Beckett and Harman deputised).

The Tories have had two. It’s getting embarrassing — and it will be a big feature of the next Labour leadership contest.

John McDonnell, her powerful shadow cabinet colleague and potential rival, said this week: “I am hoping the next leader of the party will be a woman”.

In her interview today, she says he’s “probably” right.

If not Ms Thornberry, then who? There are others, such as the impressive Angela Raynor, but they are seen as more maverick.

Of course, the next election is not due for four years and the Tories are more likely to ditch their current leader than Labour is.

But with the parliamentary car-crash over Brexit looming, and our poll today confirming Mr Corbyn is up there in the unpopularity stakes with Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband before they went on to lose elections, who’s to say what might happen in the next few months?

Ms Thornberry is a contender for the top job.