October 8, 2024 - 10:00am

“Never interrupt an enemy when he’s making a mistake.” These wise words — or something like them — are attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. From the Conservative Party’s perspective, the best thing that can be said for the current leadership contest is that it’s provided scant distraction from the ongoing self-sabotage of the Labour government.

With his first 100 days not even up yet, Keir Starmer has suffered the fastest loss of popularity of any British prime minister this century apart from Liz Truss. Amid a donor scandal, a cronyism scandal and a huge backlash to scrapping the winter fuel allowance, Starmer’s chief of staff Sue Gray resigned on Sunday, calling her role in the government “a distraction”. It’s therefore smart of the Tory leadership candidates to say so little for so long.

Or at least it would be, if tactical silence were the true motivation. But it’s not. From the outset, the contestants have sought to suppress debate within the Conservative Party by emphasising unity. That continues to be the case. Even during the political hothouse of party conference, tempers were artificially cooled. For example, when Robert Jenrick made unwise comments about UK special forces killing instead of capturing terrorists, his rival Tom Tugendhat expressed firm disagreement. What the other campaigns didn’t do, however, was go in for the (metaphorical) kill. If there was any judgement about Jenrick’s fitness to lead, it was distinctly implicit.

Similarly, when Kemi Badenoch got into a tangle over her remarks on maternity pay, the obvious conclusion — that she doesn’t watch her words sufficiently carefully — was not driven home by the other candidates. It happened again when James Cleverly condemned Starmer’s handover of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius last week. Cleverly could have been ripped apart for being the foreign secretary who had entered into these negotiations, but there was no Tory bloodletting. Rather, he’s become the bookies’ favourite and has gained key endorsements, while his rivals let it happen. They even let him get away with his statement that Tories should be “more normal”. He’s not wrong, of course, but it’s a bit rich coming from an old ally of Liz Truss.

The unity mantra, which proved impossible in power, has been reinforced by Conservative Party chairman Richard Fuller, who told GB News several days ago that removing Boris Johnson was a “mistake”. The implication is that infighting was the root cause of Johnson’s resignation. The truth is that Tory MPs tolerated month after month of mounting scandals — by no means limited to Partygate — until they were belatedly pushed over the edge. On an accelerated time scale, the same happened with Truss: party upheaval followed her downfall, not the other way round.

Disunity was never the core problem. Rather, it was a catastrophic failure of good governance and political vision. Whether made in the present or the past, the Conservative Party must face up to its actual mistakes before it can move on.

Unfortunately, the current leadership contest serves as a retrospective displacement activity: a fixation with a non-issue in order to avoid the real problem. The would-be Tory leaders should take a look at the opinion polls. Figures from Opinium and BMG Research show Labour losing support. However, the prime beneficiary is Reform UK. The Tories may prefer to forget their fatal errors, but the voters remember.


Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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