The first round votes are in from Conservative MPs, and the big story is Boris Johnson’s seemingly unsurmountable lead. With 114 of the 313 Tory MPs having backed the former London mayor, he has secured over a third of the parliamentary party and is firmly shrouded in that dangerous garment, the ‘cloak of inevitability’.
Yet look down the list (now down from 10 to seven) and one unlikely name has made it through to the next round – against expectations and against logic. Yes, Rory Stewart, the Where’s Wally? of the 2019 Tory leadership election, survives to see another day.
It’s odd. He was not supposed to figure in this race at all. Mention his name to insiders and you’d usually get an affectionate smile, a shake of the head, and a sigh: “Ah, dear Rory.” Yet even if he doesn’t make it any further, he has already achieved something remarkable – and proved an important point.
We live in an era of targeted, professionalised politics. Successful campaigns these days are at best the masterplans of tacticians such as Lynton Crosby, or at worst the result of black-box Facebook algorithms that tell you exactly what you want to hear without you realising it. Even in a general election campaign, success is supposed to come from professional pollsters slicing and dicing the electorate into ‘segments’ that can be ‘targeted’.
In the case of the Conservative leadership election, this should be even more true. The electorates in this campaign come ready-divided into concentric circles: at the centre, the 313 Tory MPs whose primary motivation seems to be to survive and keep their jobs; outside them, the 160,000 or so Tory members who will vote on the final two candidates; and finally, the general public who (we are repeatedly reminded) have no say in this momentous decision.
The other leadership candidates have understandably focused their promises on the second of these three, with ‘red meat’ stances designed to appeal to the stereotypical Tory member: shutting down parliament in order to push through a no-deal Brexit (Raab), cutting back legal abortions from 24 weeks to 12 weeks (Hunt), slashing income tax for higher earners (Johnson). This last pledge in particular, surprising and unpopular with the commentariat, had the whiff of a pre-polled Lynton Crosby policy (he is running Boris’s campaign).
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeMaybe one answer could be to encourage more ethical animal husbandry.and slaughter. The sheer cruelty of meat-eating has led many to embrace a vegetarian/vegan/pescetarian lifestyle.