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July 24, 2024 - 4:30pm
The Tory leadership contest is underway. Formal nominations close on Monday, but James Cleverly has already taken to the pages of the Telegraph to make his pitch and there’s no mistaking his theme. “In opposition we must be unified and disciplined,” he says. We need to “present an offer of unity, security and prosperity”. Driving his point home, he claims that he “can unite the Conservative Party”, and has accompanied his leadership launch with a glossy video in which he plays up his modest background and everyman credentials. Rather like Keir Starmer and his toolmaker dad, there’s mention of his mother’s career as a midwife, but somewhat less about his private education.
Cleverly, formerly foreign secretary and home secretary, blames the worst election result in Conservative history on “infighting, navel-gazing and internecine manoeuvrings” in government. Really, those were secondary effects, the result of a deeper malaise. Given the clear mandate of 2019, why did his party elect three terrible leaders in a row — each of whom effectively told the Red Wall to drop dead? Cleverly offers no clue.
In a highly competitive field, the worst of the three was Liz Truss, of whom he was an ally. She rewarded him with a spectacular promotion to the Foreign Office. No wonder he doesn’t want his party dwelling on the past. As for his vision for the future, it’s nothing more than the libertarian-lite pap that’s left the Conservatives rudderless for years. For instance, he advocates “lower taxes, with a smaller state”, but also “ramping up defence spending to 3% of GDP”. He favours “stimulation through deregulation” while vowing to protect the sacred green belt from “sprawl”. He wants a “national sense of purpose” based on an “economic dream of aspiration”. Amazingly, he accuses Labour of ideological incoherence in his Telegraph article.
This all-things-to-everyone message could yet see Cleverly elected leader. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time that an affable, mainstream contender has come through the middle to take the Tory crown. It happened in 1997, when the arch-Europhile Ken Clarke and the arch-Eurosceptic John Redwood were edged out by the compromise candidate, William Hague. Cleverly is hoping to pull off the same trick, using his pro-Brexit credentials to run to the Right of Remainers such as Tom Tugendhat while tacking to the Left of Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick.
Of course, every leadership race is different, not only because of who’s running but also because of the contest format. In 1997, it was settled among MPs in the space of a few weeks. But in 2024, it’s a much more complicated and drawn-out affair. After nominations close, the candidates will slug it out over the summer. In September they’ll be whittled down to four semi-finalists, who will then make their case in speeches to the party’s annual conference. After that, MPs choose two finalists to go forward to a ballot of party members, the winner of which will be announced on 2 November.
The closest comparison, therefore, is not with 1997, but with 2005 — the last time the Tories used this “beauty contest” format to choose a leader. The speeches will be crucial. In 2005, David Davis was the clear frontrunner, but his conference pitch fell flat. He should have been the more radical and exciting candidate, but he bored delegates with a safety-first, unite-behind-me message not unlike Cleverly’s. David Cameron, however, gave the speech of a lifetime, challenging his party on its deepest flaws and habitual complacency, but also inspiring it to do better. The contrast transformed the race.
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SubscribeToo dismissive and scornful of ‘libertarian lite’. The Progressive State is in terminal decline because it has totally rejected all belief in the free market and is hostile to the essential motors of prosperity – meritocracy and individual aspiration. The market does exist in energy, education, water, rail and property….and all as a result are failing, drowning hogtied by red tape and Command Economy Hyper Regulations. Meanwhile it has adopted a Pol Pot like eco cult policy and embraces an extreme identitarian/equelity agenda – both will summon the Horsemen. Whomever proposes a clear full neo Thatcherite assault on this awful blight in every sphere – finance, savings, legal reform all – will secure ultimate victory. They will have ready a rescue plan for the aftermath of the collapse of the EU State system and its destructive ideological outriders.
There seems to be no such MP in the Tory party that is able to offer your vision.
The Tories are still divided philosophically and need to split accordingly.
Your general contention always majors on we just haven’t done free market capitalism properly. Now obviously you’re smart enough to know it’s exactly the same argument the Communists use – it just wasn’t done properly. Brexiteers sometimes do the same.
Alot of ‘sunk-cost’ psychology obviously behind many of our personal views, but I think there is an important debate about why neo-liberalism has made many feel the system is unfairly loaded against them, driving even more inequality and why UK capitalism so fixated on ‘bricks and mortar’ rather than vibrant new business development. Piketty is not wrong in his R>C although one can disagree on his remedy.
Raging against some fictious entity that may have blocked the form of capitalism you believe could offer solution I don’t think v insightful I guess.
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The Tories have let down their members and their supporters badly this last 14 years and I am pleased to be an ex.member this last 2 years.
Cleverly is more of the same and no doubt his competitors will be also.
The problem for the Tory Party is that they are still split phillosophically, in favour I understand of the 1 Nation Tories.
The Tory brand is now toxic, no one believes them anymore and they have totally abrogated the small c Conservatives they once were.
The only way out of this unholy mess is for them to split down ideological lines and for a new party to emerge offering small c conservatism.
Offering a small state, low taxes and a policy for growth and to take note that welfarism has destroyed our economy and our values.
Odd. Your last paragraph exactly the same offering as Cleverley’s. Albeit both mere vacuous slogans.
I think that sounds more like economically liberal Thatcherism rather than small c conservatism
Nope
I fear the Conservative Blobbers will choose a compromise candidate to maintain the status quo; a manager, an administrator and appeaser. What they (and the country) need is a leader – a leader in action and inspiration rather than merely by title; a leader who talks straight and has a blend of common sense and good sense; one who ‘gets’ what ordinary folk want but is prepared to state honestly when their desires are unattainable; one who can express in plain English a vision with more than vague platitudes and empty promises.
Unity is worthless as a cause in its own right. Unity is the outcome we see when a group of people have common dreams and and a clear path forward. A ‘unity candidate’ is a waste of space.
It’s time for Kemi Badenoch to set out her vision honestly and clearly, without equivocation and ambiguity, tempting though these may be. Stand up as a leader people can and want to follow, not as a manager whose main aim is keeping everyone just happy enough not to argue in public.
The ‘heroic’ man or woman view of history usually always ends in disaster. Remember most of us have feet of clay at some point.
Usually but not always. So what would you have us do, not try, have no aspirations, hope, or wallow in perpetual doom and gloom? Just give up? Stuff that for a game of soldiers!
Not at all. Just pick your heroes v carefully
If Cleverly (or really anybody pipped for the ticket so far) becomes leader the Tories can forget being in government next election. While his declaration that “Sacrificing pragmatic government in the national interest on the altar of ideological purity is not Conservative.” might be pragmatic it hints at the continuation of the Tory party’s intellectual destitution. What the Conservative Party really needs to do is go back to first conservative principles, find its home in thinkers like Burke, Hayek and more recent thinkers like Scruton. This intellectual vacuum in the conservative party has left it disarmed in an era of ideas, leaving it vulnerable to attack from the progressive ideologues, LGBT dogmatists, from the populists on either side and now any talking head wishing to trip a patriotic Tory up need only ask the question “what is British identity” and what falls from the babbling mouth of the Tory is inevitable desperate clichés about “tolerance” or some such.
Lets face it the UKs economy is not doing well, hasn’t really been doing well for decades and it unlikely to do well for decades more – the Tories image as an economically sensible party is now dead, it need to rebrand itself. If we cannot flourish economically then we ought to flourish culturally, intellectually and spiritually. If not we might as well declare ourselves a desert.
There is real opportunity here for a grassroots conservative revival, but I fear it will not be seized and instead that torch will be taken up by the likes of Reform who for all their passion are devoid of any serious ideas.
Most of us don’t care. We’ve moved on and won’t be coming back.
I’m not a person of the Right but I think you should care. You split and you’ll kiss goodbye to any chance of being elected for more than a generation. All political groupings involve degrees of compromise.
Quite like Cleverly as a person, and having a decency, not prone to wild inflammatory statements and dog whistles, an important start.
The fact he shies away from more fundamental contradictions in Right wing thinking not a surprise at this point. These contradictions are extremely difficult for the Right to grapple with, which is why a migration issue helps them – it unifies. Beyond that they have v few answers at present to the UK’s problems.
My gut feeling is that whoever they pick, it will be a short term fix. The party has serious convulsions to go through yet. Do we really need three centrist parties?
I won’t vote Conservative again until they espouse similar policies to Reform.
he and they are a busted flush. Unless they come out and promise to leave the European court on day one, to defund the United Nations until it stops supporting Hamas, guarantees to return boats to France, defunds the, and also to transform the NHS reducing the remit of a free health care – then they are dead to me. I’ll be giving my money to reform.
The problem is that the Conservative Party split in 2016, but failed to tell anyone. Now we all know it, not many wish to vote for either of the separated cheeks of this particular rather noisome arse.
Cleverly’s on the dreary “One Nation” (Blairite) side, and completely uninteresting to most Conservatives. If we’re going to have Blairite policy and outcomes, then they should be carried out by labour, with blame clearly assignable in the future.
I wouldn’t even vote for Badenoch, who peretends to represent the other (Thatcherite) side. I believe that she’s no such thing, as a disciple of the dreadful Leftist “Whig” Michael Gove.