Even the truest of blues were not greatly impressed by the choice on offer for all the effort that she and Robert Jenrick put into trying to pander to their party's prejudices on the constituency association dinner circuit.
A brittle mandate means she will be treated as an interim chief on probation with a party that will be impatient for results and is infamous for its factionalism and its disloyalty.
Her lustiest cheerleaders cannot describe this as an emphatic victory. She won with the support of just four in 10 of that shrivelled membership.
This lack of enthusiasm was also evident during the preliminary rounds when it was Tory MPs doing the voting. In the final ballot of Conservative parliamentarians, it was virtually a three-way tie.
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