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September 3, 2024 - 7:00am
As MPs return to Westminster this week, the Tory leadership will finally end its Phoney War stage. While Labour spent the summer recess having to react to the country’s problems and preparing its legislative agenda, the Conservatives have been weighing up six potential leaders. This week and next, they will whittle them down to four. The contest is starting to get real.
The leadership votes are usually a major source of intrigue. Over the summer, MPs will have been considering not just who they want to lead the party but who they think their preferred candidate can beat and who they would least like to see in the final rounds. Votes are likely to be tight but also deeply tactical. With only 50 MPs sticking their colours to a candidate and more than 60 unknowns, there could be all sorts of moves in the corridors of power as the blocs coalesce.
We know that at least one of the big names will leave the contest in the next 10 days. Mel Stride’s campaign already looked like an outside shot, and little over the summer has suggested that he has built the momentum to make it to the final four. Leaving with him, however, will be one of the more famous and fancied contenders — Priti Patel, James Cleverly, Kemi Badenoch, Tom Tugendhat or Robert Jenrick. Whichever of them ends up in the bottom two will shape the contest’s future, with their supporters in both Parliament and the membership having to cleave to someone else.
This shift could cause some division in the party. Often, the views of members and MPs are not aligned. If Parliamentarians push out a candidate the members favour, it could reignite the debate about the balance of power between the two. So far, the contest has been reasonably mild-mannered and has not threatened party unity, but a popular favourite losing out on a narrow vote could surface some post-election rifts.
Pushing into these crucial weeks, we are likely to see more of the divisions between the potential leaders. Nominally frontrunner, Badenoch has only formally launched her campaign this week, keeping things low-key over much of the summer. Her approach takes the fight to Labour on both economics and culture, pitching towards the votes of the more pugnacious Right. Cleverly, on the other hand, has kicked off his campaign with a tilt at more centrist unity.
The division seems to be echoed in the other candidates, with the contest starting to align between those calling for a louder, more red-bloodedly conservative party and those preaching unity. The noisier candidates over the summer, Jenrick and Tugendhat, have broadly taken these positions. The former has gained momentum through putting immigration front-and-centre of his campaign, while the latter has been building a base of MPs from across the spectrum of the party. Patel’s campaign has been perhaps uncharacteristically quiet, with an insider focus on party organisation and the reforms members seem to want.
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SubscribeFrom John Major onwards the Tories have been a disaster, with a very faintly possible exception in relation to Boris John who did kind of deliver Brexit (then massively stuffed it all up).
I don’t want to see the Tory Party running the UK ever again. They have failed utterly to deal with the big issues that propelled the majority of the UK electorate to choose Brexit, before and since, and have imposed on us a succession of dreadful Prime Ministers whose leadership qualities have been risible.
I hope that as strong political party may emerge from the wake of the Reform Party – one that will appeal to the huge number voters who adhere to a moderate middle ground in politics, modestly to the right or left of centre as well as a solid core (“the little people”, as David ‘Call-me-Dave’ Cameron labelled them) – and with leaders who listen to and act on the concerns of the people who elected them to office.
We want politicians who state “No increase in taxes” during election campaigns who then don’t immediately signal major tax increases within a couple of months of winning power. We want politicians who stand up for majority rights, not prioritising minority rights. We want politicians who will put into practice the principal that all people are treated equally before the law, and not impose a ‘two-tier’ approach to demographic division. We want politicians who will demonstrate respect and pride in the cultural and history of their country. We want politicians who won’t use the civil service bureaucracy as an excuse not to deliver.
We want real change!
Keir Starmer’s Labour Party will be literally ruinous for the country, most particularly in relation to education, energy and food security, job creation, civil liberties, and border control. Yet, but fully in line with their passive approach before the election which gave Labour a free pass to win by default, the Conservatives by their dawdling now are failing in their duty to hold this authoritarian and duplicitous government to account. This country needs a leader of the opposition to take the battle to Labour.
I don’t think there’s any urgency to be an active opposition right now.
Firstly, the public still don’t want to hear from the Tories. They should be well advised to keep silent for a while and at least seem to have spent a good period in the wilderness taking their punishment and learning some lessons. I say “appear” as I havel ittle confidence they will learn any lessons and if they do these will be the correct lessons.
Secondly, they should allow Labour to keep making mistakes and offer them no help to avoid them. Let them keep digging for a year. That seems callous in the short term (for the country as a whole). But necessary for the longer term.
Thirdly, it is better that the opposition to Labour builds from the ground up from a much broader base than the Tory party. The Conservatives need to wait for the national mood shift. They aren’t going to lead it.
Finally, this is what the public voted for (or rather, not voted for – it’s what they got by not turning up to vote).
Agree with the broad thrust of your comment, particularly the last two paragraphs.
Biggest problem l think the Tories face is the simple reality that, having misled their voters with false promises for over a decade, they are now seen as the party of betrayal.
Don’t see how they recover from that, at least in my lifetime.
They will recover more quickly than you might think as the disaster of Labour becomes apparent. It is astonishing how Labour seem downright determined to get everything wrong and alienate huge swathes of the electorate.
But the Tories need to very quickly – which means over 2 or 3 years – do what was done after the defeat of Heath and build a coherent philosophy and strategy from which can come strong believable policies for 2029. Which is why they need a strong leader in place now – and keep them there. A leader who can think!
We are doomed while the electorate stays on its backside, laps up what they think are freebies and waits for other people to generate the wealth.
I believe you’re right in saying that the public don’t want to hear from the Tories yet. The biggest challenge for any new leader would seem to be creating enough distance between them and the previous regime to reassure the public that they’re not just going to get more of the same crap as before. Sloganeering from the sidelines won’t make much impact: the public will want to see proof, which won’t be easy for an opposition party to realise.
Reform have an advantage here in that it’s most prominent members have actively and vociferously gone against the grain for some time. What are the chances of them being the main opposition party when the next general election rolls around?
Opposition parties have to earn the right to be heard, by doing their job. Most of the most significant decisions of the Blair administration – Bank of England independence, referenda on Scottish and Welsh devolution, enacting the Human Rights Act, signing up to the European Social Charter, not “thinking the unthinkable” on welfare reform – were made in its first 12 months. Now is the vital time to vigorously oppose policies before they become part of the new normal. Strong oppositions can influence the Overton window on what is politically feasible for government to attempt. 33% of the vote on a 60% turnout while steadfastly refusing to set out a clear platform does not give Labour a mandate for what it is doing. But if the Tories just wait for something to turn up, the political weather will continue to be dictated by Labour.
More fool them. The middle class voters who facilitated this should have been more careful about what they wished for.
and there was I who thought that a Kia Starmer was a car that only came in red, envy, green or fascist black, could only turn left, could only run on bio fuel, had a white poly draylon interior, claimed to do 300 miles per tank, but would only do 10, and had a cut of sensor that stopped its movement if any racialist, or non sandaloid eco, words were uttered in its interior… It has a sports version.. the LB GT….
The challenge is that what the country needs is something the electorate are unlikely to vote for.
Whilst I’m not particularly right wing or a Brexiteer, the best attack dog for Opposition by far is Kemi Badenoch. Robert Jenrick didn’t come over well during Covid. She will cut through, and doesn’t have anything to lose at this stage
The Conservative Party needs a revolution and Kemi Badenoch is the one to start the ball rolling.
They are all trapped by the membership wanting to hear certain mantras but unwilling to face the consequences and trade-offs an honest discussion would surface. It is a mirror for the Right per se. It can amplify concerns but can’t develop practical policy responses or be honest about the choices. It’s why gradually folks are coming to realise Right Wing Populism only takes us so far and often makes things worse. This recognition still has some road to run, but it has an inevitable course.
Presumably that’s why millions of Europeans are voting for hard-right parties then?
As I say, some road to run but every time they gain power it unravels. More voted against them – you need to remember that too.
Of course, exactly the same point applies to Starmer’s “landslide” election:
AfD vote share in Thuringia in 2024 : 32.8%
Labour national vote share in 2024 : 33.7%
Barely a rounding error between them.
The only unity of worth is that of a shared vision. Those who call loudly for unity are failing to offer any direction; those offering vision are accused of being divisive. Unity will not attract new voters; vision will.
I remember the car workers striking in the 60s, because they could, and look what happened to the car industry.
But people still didn’t understand that producing poor products is the quickest way to no job, perhaps for ever. When the realise that, they might be more amenable to a new approach, and the accompanying vision.
And it’s the same outside work, where relinquishing judgement to the ideology of others is allowing so much destruction. We need the freedom to question, and expect responses that may need further investigation. We might even get to the stage of informed discussion.
If the now ” ToyliTory” polyester and pointy corfam shod haven of the aspirant upwardly mobile lower middle class could put Jeremy Clarkson and Yaxley- Lennon, or whatever he is called, in charge, they would win a landslide by dint of working class support, across the nation.
If their rout has taught the remaining tories anything it should be the need to rally round whoever is eventually chosen as the new leader, and show them some long-term loyalty.
My hopes aren’t high.
I see you skipped over the choice of leader!
Very wise.
Who the conservatives elect or don’t is, in the wider scheme of things, irrelevant. None of the candidates come anywhere close to having the vision, philosophy and determination to engender the changes necessary in order to salvage the situation the UK now finds itself in.
The UK (along with a large number of other western democracies) is now reaching the tail end of the S curve of the “social democracy” model that has prevailed in the west since the 1960’s. It is a model characterised by increasingly unsustainable social contracts and increasing degrees of growth destroying state intervention that is now reaching the end of the road.
In the 1960’s the government tax take of GDP was broadly in the 25%-30% range for western countries (Scandinavia being at the top end). These are now in the 36%-46% range and rising (only the US has remained at around 25%). Along side this government debt to GDP ratios were in the 25-35% range in the 60’s and now the general ratio in the Euro area is 88% (some higher, Italy at 140 odd and some lower Germany at 64 odd). In 1960 in Europe 9% of the population were above retirement age, it is now nearly 30%, and productivity in Europe has been falling steadily year on year since 1960. So in summary, increasingly high taxation, with high levels of debt, falling productivity, an ageing population and the ratio of productive vs state employee worsening every year.
This is not a sustainable picture. It may last a few more years but reality will eventually assert itself. So unless the political classes are prepared to grasp the nettle and address these issue the train will hit the buffers, and as once scans the landscape domestically and abroad there is no-one even talking about this, let alone developing strategies and plans to address it. Which is why the conservative leadership election is rather irrelevant.
Good point well made.
Since everyone I know is an ex-Con voter, I suspect it’s an irrelevance to many. We have moved on.