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The Tory Ultras (Credit: Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty)
The Conservative Party has two instincts lodged deep in its soul, each battling for supremacy. The first is the desire for the reassuring comfort of what it sees as solid, sensible government. We might call this the conservative instinct. The second is a more romantic yearning for counter-revolution; the Jacobite desire to undo what has been done because what has been done is bad. Let’s call this the Tory instinct. Based on the result of this week’s leadership ballots we can draw one fundamental conclusion: the Conservative Party has chosen to take a radical turn to Toryism.
From a shortlist of four candidates, two of whom came from the solid, “sensible” Left of the party — Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly — and two from the more radical Right — Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch — Conservative MPs have whittled down the choice to the two Tory ultras proposing a more fundamental break from the past. By making this choice, the contours of the next four years in British politics have been shaped, regardless of who is ultimately chosen.
For most of the Conservative Party’s post-war history, it should be remembered, the desire for a quiet life has been the pre-eminent instinct, especially among Tory MPs. In 1955, the party replaced Winston Churchill with his reassuring deputy, Anthony Eden. In 1957, Eden was replaced by his reassuring Foreign Secretary, Harold Macmillan, who in turn was replaced by his reassuring Foreign Secretary, Alec Douglas-Home. From Douglas-Home the crown was then passed to Edward Heath, the candidate best suited to continue Macmillan’s “Middle Way” politics.
The one candidate who broke with this, of course, was Margaret Thatcher, though it is largely forgotten now that she was not the most Right-wing of the candidates in the 1975 leadership election, challenged from the Tory Right by the aristocratic romantic Hugh Fraser who saw in Thatcher just another shade of Heathite grey. Since Thatcher’s defenestration in 1990, the desire for solid conservatism has once again largely held sway — at least among Tory MPs.
[su_pullquote]"The Conservative Parliamentary Party has once again concluded that the crisis it and the country faces requires revolution."[/su_pullquote]
In every Tory leadership election from 2001 until Boris Johnson’s victory over Jeremy Hunt in 2019, Conservative MPs as a whole have chosen candidates from the solid Left of the party over the radical Right: Ken Clarke over Iain Duncan Smith in 2001; David Cameron over David Davis in 2005; and, finally, Theresa May over Andrea Leadsom in 2016. Even in the two leadership elections between Thatcher’s victory in 1975 and Boris Johnson’s in 2019, when the candidate of the Left was not backed by a majority of MPs, the winner still offered a form of reassuring continuity: John Major in 1990 and William Hague in 1997. Even after Boris Johnson, the instinct returned with Rishi Sunak beating Liz Truss among MPs in 2022.
There are two crucial lessons to draw from this record. The first is that since William Hague carried out his ill-conceived “modernisation” of the Conservative election rules to give members the final say in the leadership, the party has been beset by a fundamental structural problem. This may fatally undermine the victory in this election.
British parliamentary democracy is governed by the simple rule that whoever controls a majority in parliament is prime minister. In his wisdom, however, William Hague changed the rules so that the Conservative leader can theoretically be someone who does not even command a majority of support among their own MPs. On both occasions when this possibility came to pass, the result was disastrous: Duncan Smith in 2001 and Truss in 2022. This is now a real possibility once again.
The final tally of votes for the three remaining candidates saw Kemi Badenoch receive 42 votes, Robert Jenrick 41 and James Cleverly 37. In effect, each candidate had the support of just a third of the parliamentary party, with two thirds opposed to them — often viscerally. No matter how Cleverly’s supporters break over the coming days and weeks, the decision is no longer theirs, but the membership’s. Based on the conversations I have had with pollsters, Tory MPs and party aides over the past few weeks, there is every chance that Jenrick will now secure enough of Cleverly’s supporters to declare himself the choice of the parliamentary party, only for Badenoch to claim the crown regardless.
[su_unherd_related fttitle="More from this author" author="Tom McTague"]https://unherd.com/2024/09/the-tory-contender-labour-fears/[/su_unherd_related]
Should this happen, irrespective of her attributes, Badenoch will be forced to build her leadership on fundamentally unsafe foundations, a Tory tribune on top of an uneasy parliamentary party. This would be disastrous.
The second lesson is yet more crucial. The only two instances when MPs opted for a Right-wing ultra over a moderate opponent came in moments of perceived national crisis, when the desire for a quiet life was no longer tenable. In 1975, Thatcher was chosen as a counter-revolutionary candidate to put the post-war social-democratic state out of its misery — at least as she and her supporters saw it. The failures of Ted Heath and Harold Wilson, IMF crisis of 1976 and Winter of Discontent of 1978/79 had created a sense of national emergency, requiring a different response from what had come before. In 2019, something similar was true after three years of parliamentary stasis following the EU referendum of 2016. When presented with the choice, the Conservative Party concluded — reluctantly — that radicalism was its only option for survival.
What is so striking about the ballot today is that it appears the Conservative Parliamentary Party has once again concluded that the crisis it and the country faces requires revolution. And so, the two candidates who will now go before members offer different forms of radicalism: Badenoch offers an instinctive form of modern Toryism which rails against the spread of Left-legalism and its catch all partner “wokeism”, whether in the form of equalities legislation, trans-laws or DEI requirements. Jenrick, in contrast, offers a more traditional critique of Britain’s immigration policies with promises of returning sovereignty, though with a contemporary analysis of the failure of the British state. Both are promising forms of counter-revolution, Jenrick’s of the Blairite state and Badenoch’s of the progressive zeitgeist itself.
If either is going to succeed as a truly counter-revolutionary Tory in the image of Thatcher, they will need a good dose of what their opponent is offering and more. Jenrick lacks the Jacobite dash of the true Tory radicals: Bolingbroke, Disraeli, Churchill and Thatcher; Badenoch the broader analytical frame that made Thatcher successful. And what both still lack is the ideological army committed to a cause that any upheaval needs. In 1975, Thatcher had her own think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies, plus the trailblazers that came before, including most notably the Institute for Economic Affairs. Today, it is hard to see the same kind of intellectual energy anywhere in Westminster.
That Conservative MPs have chosen this moment to gamble the party’s future on their harder instinct for counter-revolution has already raised the stakes of British politics for the remainder of this parliament. The exact form of Tory radicalism the Conservative Party membership chooses in three weeks’ time may define British politics for much longer than that.
TomMcTague
Tom McTague is UnHerd’s Political Editor. He is the author of Betting The House: The Inside Story of the 2017 Election.
TomMcTague 
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SubscribeCertain people become terribly animated as to whether MPs or members should chose Party Leaders, but the truth is that they are both rubbish. Leaders chosen by either the MPs or the members are generally bad enough. Yet the Conservatives look set to join Labour in having one who had been chosen by both. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Conservative MPs chose John Major, William Hague, Michael Howard, Theresa May and Rishi Sunak, while the party members presented a grateful nation with Iain Duncan Smith, David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Take your pick. It was considered that Howard, May and Sunak were self-evidently the only candidates, meaning that May and Sunak were appointed directly to the Premiership without a vote’s having been cast even among MPs, although the MPs had been heavily behind both. In and out of Parliament, any doubters were dismissed as obvious lunatics.
Labour pulled the same trick with Gordon Brown, although he would also have won a members’ ballot. But in 2020, the Parliamentary Labour Party had been all ready to secede, and to litigate for the party’s assets, if the plebs had not given it who it wanted, as they duly did. The 100-year blackout of the Left had been reimposed, so the only noises off that anyone would admit to being able to hear were from sniffy old Blairites. Those can hardly complain today, though. Beyond their wildest dreams is the means-testing of Brown’s winter fuel payment, a key measure in cementing the enormous popularity that he enjoyed for many years, long after most voters had recognised that the Blairites’ own hero was a war criminal surrounded by crooks.
Well, now we have another Prime Minister who is a war criminal surrounded by crooks, and who is arguably a crook himself. When he is not starving children, then he is freezing pensioners. The MPs and the party members both chose him, although at the present rate the MPs will soon be the only remaining members of the Labour Party. So again, and even before considering that Labour’s rules had been changed under Keir Starmer to make a contested Leadership Election effectively impossible, when it came to whether MPs or members should choose the Leader, then take your pick.
the enormous popularity that (Brown) enjoyed for many years,
Which is baffling since he did more to widen the class divide in Britain than any other postwar politician.
If the Tories want to defeat Labour at the election there is only one choice: Kemi Badenoch. and that’s for the simple reason that she is completely unimpeachable given that’s she’s obviously a female and black. Given that Kemi is anti-woke this is the ideal choice for combating all the nonsense coming out of Labour. I would wager that at the next election, should Kemi be selected as the Tory Party leader, she will win by a huge majority.
You’d lose your money, sport.
She will be selected as Tory leader by the same loons that gave you Truss and she will be about as successful. She will drag the Tories further and further right while the rest of the country gets on with fixing the damage the Tories have done. Anti-woke doesn’t pay the bills, old boy!
She might limp through to the next election – although probably not – and if she does the conservatives will be annihilated again and Kemi will be dumped and forgotten.
I’d be extremely happy to place a very large wager on it!
Not much sign of Sir Kneel fixing anything other than for one of his generous donors.
Minor correction: woke doesn’t pay the bills. It increases them.
Every woke policy creates extra costs and makes something that was once quick and easy and didn’t need any external help/guidance/moderation into something slow and expensive with ever more people needlessly involved.
I disagree. The Conservatives are so despised for what they did/let happen that it will take two cycles for the population to forget their spineless non actions, Brexit destruction and progressive liberal excesses. Nobody trusts Liebour or the Consocialists. They are the Uniparty racket.
Reform are the only game in town now and will ‘market lead’ all the way to ‘29.
The way it’s going now is ridiculously incompetent, so it shouldn’t be that hard.
It will take much less than one cycle for the electorate to realise that Labour is worse.
In the meantime, the Conservative Party can chose a leader who is Conservative, like Kemi Badenoch, or more continuity, centrist, Blair loving mediocrity, who will fail.
I find the Brexit destruction argument boring and surely only relevant to those who desire bureacratic control by a supra-national body that has regulated European industry out of competitve existence to the point where they are erecting regulatory trade barriers to stiffle competition.
Even the Labour Party are not going to withdraw from CPTPP which says something.
Whilst some fixate on EU regs and supra national governance it ain’t why folks supported Brexit. It was lower immigration, wealthier Country and better public services. And on those, utter failure.
Well, it’s pretty obvious that you’re not going to get a ‘wealthier Country’ and better public services if you don’t cut immigration. It’s not the fault of Brexit voters that the governing class set out from day one to sabotage the process.
But Bojo, and bit later, Braverman, signed off the Visas HB? Are you creating some fictitious entity that absolves them of that responsibility? Why’d they do it? And why weren’t they honest re: Brexit on this?
It’s because they knew the lies work and alot of folks would fall for it.
Bojo is one of you, JW, don’t try to include me.
Trying to break the stranglehold of the 2 main parties in the first past the post system has been tried multiple times and hasn’t worked in the last 100 years. Reform aren’t going to do it either. They are a pressure group who can try to influence the Conservatives – that’s the best they can hope for.
Err Brexit destruction? Isn’t the Stockbroker private schoolboy Farage one of the chief architects of that sh*tshow?
Reform last 5mins the moment they come under real Policy scrutiny. Let alone the sort of loon they attract as a candidate.
Too much exposure to an echo chamber can cause this ailment.
Patel and Braverman are both female and racial minority. This never stopped either of them being regularly criticised and condemned by the Left. Why would Badenoch be any more immune?
Absolutely correct Johann, the country and conservative members are well to the right of their MPs following years of having potential MPs selected by Tory Central Office and not locally selected. Kemi is the one that will put us on the road to election success against the opposition.
Of course Corbyn and more activist Left pulled Labour more to the membership. That ended well didn’t it. Good luck.
I agree. The traditional Labour voter deserted them because they were sick and tired of their valid concerns being ignored. A lot of them will have voted Reform instead of reverting back to Labour. Kemi Badenoch is the antithesis of a modern politician; she speaks plainly and truthfully about the state that the country, and the Tory Party, is in and she is willing to be honest with the electorate about what needs to be done. The vast majority of the population admire honesty; a characteristic sadly lacking in so many politicians from all parties. I think the so-called ‘red wall’ voter will back her in large numbers.
Yep, it’s all about scrounging new Mums
We can’t all live off the state JW. Someone has to create the wealth before you can spend it.
…quite right. The spectacle of an Islington Lefty Lawyer who hates the Country and most of the people in it, and wants to achieve it’s abolition by handing it over to the ECHR and the UN (and, whisper it in Gath, Brussels)…taking on a Patriotic Black British Woman of Nigerian Origin…who is, I believe, an Engineer first and a Lawyer afterwards…
…promises an explosion rather louder than the one achieved by the Industrial Chemist Daughter of a successful provincial businessman of an old fashioned and non-comformist conservative disposition…
…and that rather remarkable Woman changed not just this Country, but the World…for the better.
We British have liked Warrior-Queens for a very long time…starting with Athelflaed, the “Lady of the Mercians”…who created the place…the Empress Matilda (who lost, but gave us Henry II)…Eleanor, who gave us Simon de Montfort…Margaret of Anjou (whose fierce spirit gaves us thirty years of war, and the Tudors)…
…incomparable Good Queen Bess…Anne (the First Churchill)…and Victoria…during whose reign we pretty much invented Boudicca, the prototype (who existed, but whose actual history is cloaked in romance and fiction)…
…did they all Win…No…but by God you knew if you crossed them!
I suddenly feel much more cheerful…
Elizabeth I created the modern world.
“the Conservative Parliamentary Party has once again concluded that the crisis it and the country faces requires revolution”. A more humdrum analysis is that the Conservative Parliamentary Party is concerned about of the rise of Reform.
Yes, that’s what I thought.
“What is so striking about the ballot today is that it appears the Conservative Parliamentary Party has once again concluded that the crisis it and the country faces requires revolution.”
You mean the crisis created over the last fourteen years by Conservative Parliamentary Party?
You mean the British people: the complacency, the unrealistic expectations, rhe unwillingness of young people to work as hard as their predecessors, the over-dependence on other people’s money, the stratospherically recent high Immigration levels ‘ required because of that complacency – and which end up creating their own market for public services.
Then there was Covid and war.
Spot on, Deb! ‘The fault, dear Brutus, lies in ourselves, not in our stars, that we are underlings’. For too long we have thought that the world owes us a living. It doesn’t, and the issues you have highlighted are key factors behind our present sorry state.
The young need opportunities and the expectation that they have the training and attitude to seize them, and do well.
It’s the sort of thing that rampant socialism discourages: it’s about pay, pay this week, not in two or three years time, and benefits. It’s taking responsibility for your own future that will improve your future. But don’t worry, don’t think about it, and the NHS + Welfare State will look after you. But they don’t! 🙂
And those that used to create these opportunities, they’re the Evil Rich, so now they stay at home, or move abroad. It isn’t complicated.
And while Ed Miliband is running riot, destroying wealth and the Environment, why bother setting up new businesses, as things will only get worse.
Classic Boomer, Gen X attitude – forgetting all the advantages we had and have now acquired whilst criticising those now struggling. Oh and don’t forget we’ve had the Right in power for 14years not Karl Marx.
You are an example to us all.
That is true. Pious demo of hypocrisy
‘…unwillingness of young to work as hard…’ – what a load of self righteous drivel. How many zero hours contracts did we have in our youth? How much student debt did we acquire? How many years did we need to work before we had enough deposit for a home? How much secure work was there? How many proper workplace pensions could we access? How much did our assets accumulate through no hard work of our own?
No surprise this morning the people most happy about this too clever-by-half outcome are Starmer and Davey.
Tories go with Bob Generic and for sure it’s Duncan-Smith Mk2.
Much more interesting will be KemiKazi, she of all new Mums are scroungers brainwave. She may be anti-woke, and that imo no bad thing and one of her best positives, but that ain’t going to get her elected PM. The public more interested in stuff she remains largely silent about – cost of living, a home for our young, industrial strategy, how she’ll wean certain industries off low pay immigration, health care, social care, levelling up, schools etc. Foreign policy isn’t where a GE is won but she’s an unknown in this area, although sensible enough to have not lit a match to 4k of EU regs. To win the Tory leadership a focus on Woke can work, but beyond that we know these are secondary issues to all but the echo chamber.
The pitch to Members will have both veer further Right. The question then is to what degree the inevitable ‘tack-back’ occurs. If they stay anchored to the preferences of the membership a re-alignment in UK politics quite possible and she too will become a Michael Howard.
“Much more interesting will be KemiKazi, she of all new Mums are scroungers brainwave.”
If she’d said that, she’d be very silly, but she didn’t, and you know she didn’t.
Oh yes she did. Not in those words but sufficiently to have that be the line that’ll be used back at her. And clear to any who watch the clip. Poor judgment. Politicians got to think fast on their feet and that was a significant error. She was talking about the issue of Business regs and if this was first issue that came into her mind to illuminate her point she needs to rapidly sharpen her game.
Surely this is the point. Woke attitudes don’t allow discussion at all. Is it bad if a politician has something to say, which can’t be said because of social pressures?
No she can say what she wants. Whether a v wise political call to complain about what new Mothers might be paid is separate judgment issue. Shouldn’t hide behind some ‘Woke is being so unfair to me’ angle. Just take responsibility for what you said and impression she gave.
So she didn’t say it. Period.
You’re smart enough not to go round trying to quote people out of context.
And she’s absolutely correct about the costs of business regulation. I see a new supposed “workers rights” bill is coming our way. We all know exactly what this will result in: less employment as the costs and risks of employment become unattractive for employers. Just ask the French. Every right and benefit that is created has to be paid by someone else.
She did say it. Just watch the clip. You seem to be suggesting she never mentioned benefits paid to new Mum’s. She brought it up as an issue when she had so many other things she could have used to illuminate her point, and thus needs to stand by the mis-judgment. Not being Woke surely means you take responsibility for your own mess-up?
As regards Business regs, there’s some balance in what I’ve read in the detail of new proposed laws, but you’ll know the mythology at the moment will be a few steps ahead of the facts as per usual. Nonetheless we’ve a labour force problem. The sort of flex I read about most places are already doing to order to retain and motivate.
As regards France – 8m more homes and similar population; better public services, better roads, much less of a North/South divide etc etc. Yep they have problems for sure but…
But she’s right, of course. The state does impose far too many unsupportable burdens on small businesses. Which is why we have so few that succeed. Unfortunately, our media’s only focus is on promoting the interests of the state-dependent class from which its journalists are drawn – so anyone who tries to draw attention to the real problems we face is going to be misrepresented.
She has to discover her inner Trump and just keep saying this stuff until it goes mainstream as he has done. Takes a very thick skin though.
Whatever one might think of the general theme, her choice of the example to use poor judgment.
Sooner or later someone has to put a stop to middle class freeloading or we’ll wind up like France, which is past the point of no return. The only politician in Britain who might even try is Kemi Badenoch. The problem, of course, is that not just the government machine, but also the entire media, is controlled by the freeloaders.
Still, at the very least she ought to be able to neutralise the neo-liberal carpetbaggers of Reform.
Out of interest HB what proportion of population do you see as middle class these days?
As you know I think your point here too simplistic, but not without something in it – folks tend to vote in their own self interest. The question is when does it click that naked self interest actually now creating more risk for oneself because of broader societal implications? Good politicians can explain that, but given the electoral consequences if you get it wrong it’s understandable to a point why many home truths go unsaid.
Outstanding way of phrasing it ! Government/civil service and media are indeed controlled by the freeloaders. As the past few weeks demonstrate only too well.
Attacking wokeness has to be the only issue – because it prevents real discussion about all other issues.
Proper brainwave that – ‘you may not be able to afford a home and can’t access a GP but you know what I need to talk to you about EDI’
It’s the cul-de-sac again.
Nearly 70% of us consume more than we produce. We only have to look across the Channel to France, where it has become impossible to control the debt, to see what happens when that situation becomes entrenched.
Our taxes should be spent on building infrastructure in the North and providing a safety net for the poor, not on pandering to the rent-seeking middle class in Surrey and Buckinghamshire with dodgy university degrees, gold-plated unfunded pensions and millions in unearned property wealth.
The only politician in Britain with the cojones to say so is Badenoch. Whether she will is another question. But Starmer certainly won’t. And neither will call-me-Dave clone Jenrick.
Jeez HB I agreed with alot of that, except that Kemi bit. She might say a few things that sound like it but she won’t do it. She represents a classically middle class constituency.
I am not convinced that the Tories even want to win the next election given the mess that is geopolitics, net zero etc.
If they are serious about returning to power then Kemi is the answer. Although the lack of talent currently on display in the Tory ranks makes forming a shadow cabinet a difficult task.
And therein lies a v interesting issue – 2/3s of the MPs didn’t support her. We may get to see how much political skill she really has.
They have decided to move rightwards to counter the threat of Reform instead of doing this from the centre while also appealing to more liberal-minded voters. How do they expect to recover all those seats the LibDems won in the south and south west.
“Revolution”, “counter revolution”. What is this nonsense ?
None of these people are revolutionaries. Not even remotely close.
Yet more exaggeration and fabrication.
Yet more of the media narrative du jour that Conservative MPs won’t accept and new leader and that somehow we can safely assume that everyone who didn’t choose a candidate as their first preference must and will actively oppose whoever wins. No evidence from interviews with MPs I heard yesterday to support this. Plenty of evidence of leading questions from “journalists” interviewing them.
Can these commentators just either grow up or shut up ? I’m fed up with hearing them pushing their own personal agendas. They’ve completely lost the plot. I’m starting to feel sympathetic to the MPs they’re constantly interrupting and cajoling. And that’s just not right …
Apart from all that, has it occurred to any of these people that perhaps the MPs are simply trying to find the best potential leader and rank this higher than the actual supposed left:right positioning ?
Or that perhaps it simply doesn’t matter who they choose ?
Finally, that’s the first time I’ve heard of Churchill being described as a Conservative radical. And hopefully the last. A politically illiterate comment.
Of course about 35 Winnie was quite an outlier. But you also forget his role in the pre WW1 Liberal Govt. A career difficult to categorise.
Mr McTague touched on something important here but I feel he is wrong, in this contet, to term it the Tory instinct. It is certainly not the Toryism of Burke or Disraeli. In the Reform context It is rather more like that strange hybrid whig-chauvinism and liberal conformity that was once called National Liberalism and championed by the likes of Edward Carson.
It is what splits the spirit of Reform from the true Tory Tradition. All this talk of ‘integration’ and ‘British Values’ is at best plaintive and at worst an unwitting stalking horse for crude Whiggery. As if all will be well if only the non-native population of these Islands could be made obedient, Godless little-Benthamites.
Since Canute there has been this recurrent tendency, not to say a yearning to bid the tide of history recede which subsists in a segment of the English political psyche.
It is the Tory Wil-o-the-wisp, just as The New Jerusalem is to the English Radical. it cannot happen and this England still be England. The forces of compulsion and coercion required to make the nascent future conform to that imagined past are too severe and deadening and would be a rupture in English History.
The true and useful genius of Toryism is, thankfully, quite different and it is twofold. It is ‘grafting the wild olive’ and training it. Making the strangeness of the future cohere with the familiar rythms of the past as the next chapter in our Island Story.
And secondly it is a commitment to to ‘the landed interest’. Not the Squires and landlords but, as Disraeli meant it, those whose interest lies here, in this land and is connected to the best interest of this land. The ‘Somewheres’ to use a neologism.
In the high days of Empire Lord Salisbury was apt to glory in a nation of 300,000,000 souls, 300 languages, 5 major religions and a kaleidoscope of peculiar customs united in loyalty to one Crown. Loyalty is the thing.
There is infinite potential to the man or woman who can somehow, unite this, the true coalition, which backs family, faith, private property and public decency.
That is the prize which hangs in the air waiting to be grasped.
Interesting post, but Burke was not a Tory. He was a Whig, and believed an MP’s judgement took priority over the wishes of their constituents. Pitt was also a Whig, even though he led a nominally “Tory” government. Disraeli argued that Tories should enact “Whig measures”.
The logic of the critique of Hague’s rule change is incomplete. It should also ask why William Hague – by no stretch of the imagination a stupid man – felt the need to do this.
I don’t actually know myself, but it seems to me at least clear that although it might well produce party leaders lacking the full support of his own MPs as the article explains, the alternative was having loyal MP’s but an insufficient number of loyal voters. In other words, not winning elections. If the Party membership won’t vote for a particular leader, that means the country won’t. So, what problem is the author trying to solve here, exactly?
Not a stupid man? This is the bloke who told us the ‘Arab Spring’ would bring democracy to the Middle East. You don’t get much more stupid than that.
Indeed. I wonder if its just a symptom of a deeper malaise. Its hard to think of any western democracy which has a moderately happy electorate currently – irrespective of their voting system or how they elect a leader.
Truth is, politicians actually have little power nowadays.
Many probably arrived with decent intentions but found themselves impotent to effect change in the face of a blizzard of non-Govt bodies, multi-national treaties, and the outsourcing of decisions to ‘expert’ bodies.
We’re living in the political equivalent of the banks just before the crash of 2008. -financial securitisation -collateralised debt obligations, were meant to spread risk. Instead nobody understood who was responsible for anything. It all smells like the Weimar republic in the 1930s.
Tax and spend social conservatism is not radical.
It may be Conservative, but it’s not conservative.
Whoever wins the leadership contest, if they were to win a majority at the next election, the makeup of the new intake of MPs would likely reflect the views of the leader since they’d be chosen by the same constituency party members who’d voted for them as leader.
No, they are chosen by CCO.
That is where the problem lies, especially the A Lists.
What is CCO?
The whole premise of the article is that this was a conscious choice by MPs. But there is an alternative explanation of the result as an accidental product of il-planned tactical voting.
Kemi’s the only one with big enough balls (sic) to fight the entire elite establishment now running every aspect of our lives. If she can get the people on her side I think she has a chance.
Apart from anything else I’m convinced there’s a ‘stop Kemi’ campaign going on all over the media (I’m even seeing it on GB News). They’re terrified. She’d destroy Starmer at PMQs & would have a rare old ding-dong with Farage.
They keep trying to characterise her as just another venal, corrupt, self-serving freeloader; she isn’t. You go girl!!
Kemi might have a ding-doing with Farage, but many times it’s likely to be over emphasis rather than direction, and it might fracture the Parliamentary Tory Party, which wouldn’t be a bad thing for those that want politics refreshed.
She tacks back to the centre quickly if she wins. She has to or the Party will fracture and she will have won a pyrrhic victory.
Remember the role of ego – she’s not going to play second fiddle to Farage and he the same to her. It’ll be a great fight though and looking forward to it.
I think there will be some great exchanges.
But on actual policy she’s much more vacuous and still inhabiting Planet Platitude.
Neither candidate is a right wing ultra or anything of the kind. The suggestion is ludicrous. They are moderates. They are also actually conservatives, which will make a nice change.
Apparently you are a “radical revolutionary” if you want to repeal some of the worst New Labour legislation, don’t want open borders and think that private enterprise is something other than a necessary evil that exists only to be taxed.
Laugh out loud. If the author thinks Badenoch and Jenrick are either radical or ultras, he’s missing the mark by a mile.
Jenrick is just an opportunist, Ted Heath for our times. The question is can Badenoch produce the intellectual and reasoned rationale for a modern form of small government free society Tory Party which is its only hope for survival?
I think the lady’s instincts are correct; but she needs to examine every single issue and nuance through a renewed Centre for Policy Studies that will underpin policies for 2029; then she will win.
Good point. The CPD under Willett, later moved left enough that he started his own foundation, run by a Labour voter who is now a Labour MP.
How do you assimiliate the power of QUANGO’s and non-governmental pressure groups into your small-goverment picture?
Surely it is no good shortening the arm of the legitimate executive only to see its resigned functions gladly taken up by an unaccountable third-sector oligarchy.
Outlaw them?
Close them.down
Jenrick is a gift for the other parties. At every opportunity they should point out that he is provenly corrupt in ministerial office – he has no defence to that! How many interviews can he go through when the first point made by a political opponent is that he was found guilty of corruption in office?
never going to happen unless they do a deal with REFORM. They need the northern working class…just as Trump has turned the blue wall rust belt. But once bitten twice shy. Boris screwed that for them. We will never trust them on immigration or culture war issues again.
I personally was surprised Cleverly didn’t come first considering the Conservative Party’s predilection towards infighting which would require a bridge builder like Cleverly. But then at the same time, as a continuity candidate who would put corporate interests above the interests of the electorate in the same way Starmer is doing, there was always the risk of further electoral disengagement that would see Labour winning and the Tories losing.
Consequently, it must be assumed that Conservative MPs see Farage and the Reform Party as a real threat to the Tories and so have opted for a rightward shift.
So it’s going to be interesting to see how Badenoch and Jenrick will extrapolate their cultural and economic soundbites into policy especially in terms of rolling back the legalistic Blairite State.
Badenoch seems only interested in the cultural implications of our high dependency on foreign labour which would be Home Office focused but at the same time is dodging the difficult questions surrounding our reliance on unsustainable population growth and the increasing import dependencies that entails. So one might argue her politics is about attracting the ethnic minority vote rather than long term UK sustainability.
This highlights Jenrick’s and for that matter, Farage’s dilemma, on how to do more with less people. That for me would be a much more intriguing and beneficial national debate as opposed to overly dwelling on narrow cultural arguments that basically avoid the deeper malaise of mass immigration.
when it can be said of the allegedly conservative party’s candidates for leadership that “two of whom came from the solid, “sensible” Left of the party,” that sounds like losing the plot, as you folks say.
Sorry, everybody, I don’t have a clue what is going on and being discussed in this article.
I don’t get it: why shouldn’t members have the final say? Yes, I’m an American. But I don’t get what the writer is so upset about this “modernisation”.
This all seems like a bunch of gobblydy gook nonsense.
I can see why politics is even held in lower esteem in the UK than even in the U.S.
Because whoever the majority of parliamentary party (MPs) support (a difficult task in itself) is unlikely to be the same person as whoever the Conservative Party membership (who by definition aee political activists/tend to the extremes) votes for. So there is an inbuilt tension – the person voted in by party members is unlikely to be the same person as MPs will support.
Perhaps MPss shou Listen to their party’s members.
I think the idea is that the party members who vote in those elections aren’t representative of party members overall.
There is no reason to believe that the MPs would make a different choice among the last two. After an MPs only, choice the losers would be a faction anyway. Further, the winner of the members’ vote by that very fact acquires some legitimacy.
In the old days MPs didn’t get a vote either, the leader “emerged”. Myself, I applaud the spread of democracy.
PS I am a member of the Conservative Party and am neither extreme nor, these days, very active.
Of course the Tory Party ‘needs revolution’! More of ‘the same’ isn’t going to work, is it? But the perennial tragedy of the Tory right is that they’ve got to always make their core message to their elderly party members one of efficient selfishness and tactical ruthlessness – “Sod all this wokeishness, it’s pensioners and rentiers for themselves” – while appealing to a much younger electorate at the ballot box. It works best when they can fasten onto something amorphous but emotionally appealing like monarchism and past glories, and least well when younger voters look at the cost of living and a home of their own – no under forties are ever going to vote Tory again, however rubbish the opposition is, did you not notice what a damp squib the recent anti-immigrant ‘riots’ were? The Tories simply haven’t got anything the public really want anymore.
Much the same story can be told about the Canadian Conservative Party, which, after losing under a series of moderate centrists, chose a new leader from the ‘Tory’ right. That new leader, Pierre Poilievre, looks sure to gain a crushing majority in the next election. The radical right is also gaining ground across Europe. There seems to be something in the air.
“Radical right”, what b*****ks.
I would argue that we are at a point of existential crisis. Reeves crashing around trying to find more taxes rather than addressing the productivity decline of the Civil Service, NHS and continued increase in energy costs is going to result in bankruptcy.
Tom – if this is not a WU piece and you seriously think caring about borders, safe spaces for women and children, forging better trade links, etc., making work pay, makes you ‘radical Right’ then I hope you never land anywhere where they do practice extreme politics! IMHO the Tories’ mistake was not moving to the centre in 2010 but not moving back to the centre-right in 2015. The rest as they say… And as regards ‘choosing this moment’ there was only ‘Hobson’s Choice’.
“Right-wing ultra”! You make them sound like neo-nazis! Either of these two will be nearer the moderate McMillan than to Thatcher. You seem to be forgetting how far the centre has drifted to the left in the past 40 years.
Are people responding to radicalism always radicals themselves? Or just a return to moderation as understood by most people
I’m looking forward to the day Robert Jenrick, or indeed any other defeated contender, stands up and declares himself “the choice of the parliamentary party.” I wonder what his best job will be once his constituency party members have deselected him.
Good heavens, is that what passes for radical these days? Only shows how impoverished the uniparty has left our imaginations.
It’s not just about the Tory party though,is it? The electorate will also have a say. Sunak tried to be the ultimate in “reassuring comfort” and led the party to its worst ever defeat. Farage the Jacobite stole their clothes and a large number of their supporters. They won’t return for the “reassuring comfort” brigade in the Tory Reform Group. Any TRG – supported candidate would not be able to differentiate themselves from the Lab Dem uniparty.
Kemi B is our vote in Australia.
Anti-woke, anti-woke, anti-woke and fiercely bright, fair and able to see all sides at once.
For the record, you don’t speak for EVERYONE in Australia….
I really hope its Badenoch! She could start an argument in an empty room and is incredibly thin skinned. I doubt that she’d last a year but what a fun year it will be – unless you’re a Tory of course!
Neither are “radical”.
The concluding sentence of this piece is absurd. The only thing this leadership election seems likely to define is the precise pace of the Conservative Party’s dissolution, with the greater portion defecting or deferring to Reform.
Labour have taken the country to the kind of dire straits, politically in 14 weeks, it took the Tories 14 years. Liz Truss, eat your your heart.
One moment Cleverly was celebrating his win with a pint in a pub and the next he was drowning his sorrows with another one. You have to keep your eye on the ball and your shoulder to the wheel to reach the top of the greasy pole.
Elections are won from the center. The Conservatives have no seats at all now in traditionally deep blue Oxfordshire of all places, and they are not going to win any back from Labour or LibDems if they move to the right.
The Tory Party has dumped on the UK electors for far too long. I hope we never again see them return to power.
They all voted Reform
Radical? Look at the stats: millions on benefits; low growth; knife crime through the roof; Albanian gangs running drug business; illegal immigration out of control; immigration adds one city per year;woke furthered by Treasury; robbery easy peasy. And all after 14 years of “moderate” one nation dominance. Not to mention budget deficits; ginormous debt; underfunded military. With Starmer and his far left chums in power. The UK is long past business as usual. What is required is a root and branch overhaul of everything since the times of that Godfather of modern Britain, Woy Jenkins.
The issue Britain has failed to understand is that perhaps 30 to 50% of our workforce is un and semi skilled . The competition in trade and technology has increased since 1945 and we have failed to educate and train our population so that no more thn 20% are semi-skilled and the rest skilled. AI is likely to remove the need for much semi skilled or even skilled office work in accountancy law, marketing, state employees. The top 7 tech forms in the USA have a value 20 times that of the same companies in Europe.
We have a welfare system and NHS which was suitable up to mid 1960s where people had a sense of responsibility and self control so rationed themselves. The infiltration of many Trotskyists into government since the 1960s who preached a sense of entitlment and lack of responsibility has caused costs to rocket.
Civil service lacks the technicals skills and drive to solve problems. The massive cost overuns and inability to produce adequate defence equipment demonstartes this point . Our education systems fails to provide the knowledge and skills for the 21st century world of AI.
Neto zero is a disaster producing electricity costs four times that of the USA.
Our Police force lacs the skills and toughness to defeat organised crime from Eastern Europe where many criminals have military and intelligence training. Our legal system is run for the benefit of the enrichment of lawyers.
NGOs have becone run for the benefit of those who run them.
In summary, we have created a vast group middle class people who run the country for their benefit and the detriment of everyone else.