Today we will know who the two candidates that Tory party members will have to chose between to be their new leader might be.
One of those two looks likely to be James Cleverly. He has 39 MPs supporting him, and requires 41 to be in the final member ballot.
Which of Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch might he face? I have not a clue right now, and I am sure that neither of them do either. It seems no one knows where the 20 votes previously offered to Tom Tugenhadt (the most popular candidate in the country) might go. There is also a real possibility that some current supporters of each candidate might still swap who they vote for.
What, however, seems likely is that Cleverly might oppose someone who could, quite unbelievably, be quite a lot further to the right than he is.
If, as we usually assume, the Tory membership is at the very least detached from reality, the likelihood that they will vote for the further right candidate, whether Badenoch or Jenrick, is high. In other words, Cleverly might come across as the relative moderate, but that is of absolutely no benefit to him.
Of Jenrick and Badenoch which is better for the Tories and the country, or Labour come to that?
Badenoch exudes all the madness Liz Truss had to offer two years ago when the membership selected her. Given she's highly unlikely to make it to prime minister (public opinion suggests they have already worked her out) that means she's bad for the Tories and good for Labour, but also, with regret, for the movement of the Overton to the right.
Jenrick is almost as bad.
The selection of either does nothing for the Tories and this country. Labour is, anyway, defeating itself right now. The Tories have almost no influence on Labour's fate. They can destroy their own credibility without any assistance, it seems.
So, what else to say? Three things.
First, there is the chance that the Tory membership will only have a choice between people of colour in this election. I think that significant.
Second, note that the Tories have precisely no faith in first-past-the-post electoral system when it comes to choosing a leader. It is time they gave up faith in it for general elections.
Third, who cares about the outcome ? In reality, what chance have the Tories got of ever dealing with the challenges coming at them from four directions now (Reform, Labour, LibDems and SNP - and even, possibly, the Greens)? The skill in messaging that will require is going to well beyond the capabilities of any of these potential leaders. They have not a hope of avoiding the pincer attacks coming their way in the future in that case, or of countering them. The likelihood of Tory revival is slim as a consequence,whatever they might like to think.
But what does that say about the future of British democracy? I wish I knew.
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Badenoch and Jenrick will chase Reform further to the right and end up losing support from more people than they attract. Neither or them is a Donald Trump, or even a Nigel Farage.
Cleverley at least has a chance of attacking Labour in a way that might win the Conservatives the next election.
None of them is charismatic, or the sharpest tool in the box.
So the Conservatives are back in 1997, choosing between Hague or Clarke, and Redwood, Lilley or Howard. Or 2001 and Clarke, and IDS or Portillo. Neither Hague nor IDS, not even Howard in 2003, had much chance against New Labour. But Starmer is not Blair.
There is a chance that the next Tory leader is so bad they get replaced before the next general election. It is really difficult to see where the next leader may come from with a realistic chance of rebuilding the Conservatives as a political force.
The next Tory PM is most likely still in school right now.
Thank you, Richard.
I know what you are getting at, but have a bad feeling that the blonde bombshell is on the comeback trail with his autobiography. I heard that Good Morning Britain were gushing over him.
Sky wasn’t, last night
Thank you, Andrew.
Richard and readers may have read this: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/12/tory-leadership-jenrick-tugendhat-cleverly-badenoch.
I think it is fairly clear now that in order to save British democracy, we need a new option on the left rather than on the right. It doesn’t even need to be all that left wing, almost centrist, but it does need to challenge an economic orthodoxy that failed in practice in 2007 but still dominates Conservative and Labour Party (and Lib Dem and Reform) thinking.
Agreed
But the left is hopeless at coalescing
I may be amongst those not good at it, I confess
Me too!
But I blame the tendency of right on neo-liberals who can’t stand the racism in their own party for a lot of the crap policy making that happens in the party that is meant to belong to us.
Interesting post…………….
If we accept that most of our party politicians are nothing but avatars for wealth/capital, then I don’t see how we can write any of these Tory people off.
The corrupt funding of politics will mean anything is possible in terms of who we get to vote for. All that is needed is for one of these characters to tickle the fancy of a rich person, and then money will be spent polishing whatever turd the rich think is worth funding. The turd will have a sponsor – and that is all that matters. The one thing we can guarantee is that in politics at least, there are enough unprincipled people to choose from whom can be used.
Then, on the other hand we have our wonderful First Past the Post voting system, which is a system that operates more like a trap – waiting for the incumbent party to totally mess things up so that the electorate can take their revenge and vote in the next lot regardless of whether they have anything to say or not (this is what happened in 2010 remember).
You could say that the voters lust to deal out punishment at general elections is basically their own fault – because they fail to take Milan Kundera’s advice and forget the past.
So, I am more sceptical about the Tories because I simply know that I cannot take any of it at face value.
We are dealing with manufactured absurdity here.
Our politicians – those in hock to capital at least – are absurd because they have no ideas or thesis about how to solve our problems which are many. But that is only because they have taken money from vested self interest whose thesis is themselves and their own rational self interest, their own welfare etc. Such politicians are here to hold the land, to conserve the status quo.
So the irrationality that our politicians present us with is part of a rational plan by capital to prevent the change we need. This because wealth thinks that money will buy itself out of the mess it is creating – which again is rather irrational, because their wealth has changed their psychology and they now think more like Gods when in fact they are just men and women.
The future of British democracy? Surely unless the electorate take more interest it’s one of electing “benefit frauds” (Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer) to run the country! Recently, for example, how ironic a person who was chosen to investigate Partygate because of her integrity is pushed aside by a person who the Electoral Commission deemed necessary to fine:-
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labour-campaign-chief-failed-to-declare-700k-in-donations
“The Fraud: Keir Starmer, Labour Together, and the Crisis of British Democracy” :-
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fraud-Starmer-Together-British-Democracy/dp/1682195988/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1J6XG6FDVDKA&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.XGlCoH1cxUCRz12C1EHqVsLCAyEpwJPtGJksa_HcvQWvMhfnu3wXFoCpGRw5PMl3OAg6tNThknE6weJ2S7WK0jEoRvHF7qkx2jrfM5rJR4MZOyBLgrsQMEGu5A9T5NE6xZaf5XxyeirwTR-Ye9u3wj6ujVJSrwSA4RDZJrTKbX9TZVoA5OUw_FmIVorY4Aqt1dv8HkJfHn3ZtxoZTCK9lpUg5ShLJLcFmzRA_TrPN-k._m65YuUkyLDh5m2j6f-jVXQbq7Z6opvC4V6hbHQiqr4&dib_tag=se&keywords=paul+holden&nsdOptOutParam=true&qid=1728459580&sprefix=Paul+Holden%2Caps%2C110&sr=8-1
The best economic policy money can buy!
https://www.labourtogether.uk/all-reports/building-a-new-britain
I think there is a touch of irony going on here….
Quick techie side-note; here’s that same url but without all the tracking added on to it
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fraud-Starmer-Together-British-Democracy/dp/1682195988/ref=sr_1_1?
Generally speaking, everything after (and including) that question mark is tracking info which we don’t need.
Thank you, Schofield.
Shed no tears for Sue Gray.
Exhibit 1: https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/clothes-overnight-stays-cash-lord-alli-helped-labour-3245872. Please scroll down to Liam Conlon, the new Labour MP for Beckenham and Penge. One of Waheed Alli’s (PR) business associates is a leading light in the local Labour party.
I will let readers from County Armagh pipe up about what she was doing in Newry.
If we had a stronger Labour party, I’d probably agree with this article more, but I have a feeling that once the Conservative Party have the leadership battle dealt with and are back into ‘running a party’ mode, Rupert Murdoch won’t need his tame Labour leader any more and Starmer’s easy ride in the press (corruption scandal notwithstanding) will come to an end- and it won’t take changing a lot of minds for the Conservatives to be at least beating Labour in vote share, if not necessarily commanding a Commons majority.
Thank you, Richard and Schofield.
Please give Labour Together its full name and details: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/09630980/officers.
Thanks Colonel. Worth investigating the names to see what kind of thinkers they are and what makes them so.
I don’t believe it even having just seen it on companies house.
This obvious ploy opens up external funding – to undermine the Labour party itself anytime it wants to deal with the Left.
A similar comment here. http://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-stakes-of-tory-leadership-contest.html?m=1
Nicky Campbell had a Boris Johnson phone-in this morning. A substantial number of callers still enthusiastically support Johnson. They think Labour is already doing worse than the Conservatives. I condense and summarise what I heard. I cannot rationalise what impact this would have in an election, but if I may indulge a speculation I believe there is a sizeable proportion of the electorate in Britain, a minority no doubt but a material one in our FPTP system; that completely lacks the capacity for impartial judgement or the ability to rise above deeply honed prejudices.
Johnson serves a very useful purpose, precisely because of his nature and his time in office. He flushes out to the surface the otherwise well hidden real nature of a substantial part of the British electorate. I find it disturbing, but not in a way that offers ready solutions. It appears to confirm that it is very doubtful if Britain has any real capacity to rise above the predicament in which it finds itself. The madness will go on. Endlessly.
The problem for the British people is that they may go on fooling themselves; but the time has now long gone that Britain can fool the rest of the world. In such circumstances there is a price to that will be paid for Britain fooling itself.
I am inclined to agree with you
Thank you and well said, John.
With regard to Britain fooling the rest of the world, that is / was doable when tugging at Uncle Sam’s coat tails. The US is in decline. Uncle Sam will eventually go home. What will Britain do?
There are two fora where Britain is no longer able to fool fellow members, the EU (due to how Brexit evolved) and NATO, where on two separate occasions, at a committee of military professionals and a committee of diplomats, last year, the UK was asked by the chairs to stand down from its posturing and rebuild its forces. The UK could not even give a definition of what constitutes a brigade and when it may have one combat ready. To be fair, most NATO members are in a similar pickle, but they sensibly keep quiet.
Good points. It is important to realise that whoever the Tory leader is will shape the direction of Starmer and Labour and as mentioned – if it is Badenoch or Jenrick it will drag the debate to the right and Starmer and Labour will go happily to the right with them (especially with McSweeney now helping to run things).
What I find interesting from a few commentators (an Economist Bagehot editorial recently asking the question why are pro-Europeans and rejoiners so timid and ineffectual) – is that a key way to challenge Starmer within the party – from the left – would be for closer ties to Europe.
I think some people are beginning to question whether Starmer will last the five years or be challenged? (Maybe unlikely now that McSweeney has a firm grasp of operations.)
Thank you and well said, Duncan.
Cork born and raised McSweeney is blue Labour.
I am reminded of Hobbes’ view that people are so stupid or ignorant that they need to be led by a powerful person, a ‘sovereign’. This is also the view of the mega rich (Musk, Thiel etc) and the not-so-rich (Rees-Mogg pere, of course, who wrote the British handbook on it – The Sovereign Individual).
Keeping the people stupid and ignorant is a time honoured strategy of the powerful. Those of us lucky enough to have the education or the exposure to critical thinking should work tierlessly for a better education system, for better regulation of the media, so that stupidity and ignorance can no longer be used to keep people down.
[…] was wrong to suggest, only yesterday morning, that James Cleverly would be in the final two of the Tory leadership […]
Good post, as ever. I used to think fptp should be replaced by pr but now I’m not so sure. I think it could give Reform a massive boost. Look what’s happening in countries that have it. The far right is on the rise. Maybe better the devil you know, even if it is less ‘democratic’.
Wrong
We have to take the far-right on – not try to deny they exist as you suggest
I think you are being a bit naïve Richard.
As comments go, that’s pretty useless
Might you try presenting an argument as to why that might be the case?
Well, I didn’t think your comment that I was ‘wrong’ terribly enlightening! You seem to think this is a black and white issue. I’m not so sure and if you read my post carefully you’ll see that I was not ruling out PR. I was expressing doubts about the wisdom of going for it, especially now.
Of course a change to PR could represent more accurately voters’ views. It would thus be more democratic. But it could also bring with it a significant boost to the power of the right. I think that is dangerous, especially at the present time with so much turbulence in the world. You say that we should take the far right on. I very much doubt that logic and the power of rational argument will shift the opinions of those who are attracted to Mr Farage, at least in the short term. An extreme example is the large number of US citizens who support Mr Trump. I don’t see much evidence that ‘taking them on’ would work. Mr Farage has done huge damage to our country already through his espousal of Brexit and I think it would be very risky to facilitate his acquiring even more power. You can call it realpolitik if you like but we live in the real world.
So I think that, at present, the best might be an enemy of the good. There are many more important things to worry about. To mix my metaphors, letting the genie out of the bottle might be a massive own goal.
Whern the only options now available are the far right, the far right and what was once thought to be the far right (Reform, Tories, Labour in order) how can perptuating the status quo seerve anyone.
People want decent government in this country and are being denied it by our electoral system.