As former First Rand Chair Roger Jardine launches his new political party-cum-movement, Change Starts Now, quite how this is converted into him making a run for the Presidency in next year’s general election, as his funders hope, is about as clear as mud. Tony Leon, former Democratic Alliance leader, tells Peter Bruce in this entertaining final 2023 edition of Podcasts from the Edge that while he wishes Jardine well he was underwhelmed by the Change Starts Now (awful awful name) launch last Sunday. Can he possibly be manoeuvred into a position where established parties offer him a secure shot at at least becoming an MP. Only MPs can be elected president by parliament. And then how does he turn his late launch into a mobilising event for the rest of the (non-EFF) opposition? Leon says DA leader John Steenhuisen has opened up a small chance of success for Jardine — always assuming the ANC fails to form a government after the elections — by declaring during the creation of his "moonshot pact” of like-minded opposition parties that he does not insist on getting the top job, as leader of the biggest opposition party, should his election coalition succeed in winning a majority. That is itself a slim prospect but its a gap. How Jardine slips through it is another question entirely.

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