The Conservative party is preparing the ground for its sixth leader since the Brexit referendum eight years ago. Were one of those actuaries who help insurers assess probabilities let loose on the Tory leadership race, it is hard to envisage any of the six candidates being rated as a likely future prime minister. Even removing David Cameron from the list of former PMs and discounting the impending leader leaves us with four completed leadership cycles in eight years. At that rate, the person becoming leader on 2 November could be expected to last until autumn 2026.
One assumes the party will ultimately alight on a Young Lochinvar with a dash of panache
The last time the Tories lost power in a landslide – in 1997 – three party leaders in a row failed to get the keys to 10 Downing Street. One didn’t even get to the next election.
And yet a bumper crop of half a dozen hopefuls has been duly nominated for the coming battle, each apparently believing he or she is made of the right stuff to mastermind a Tory restoration. That’s almost five per cent of the entire parliamentary party – the pro-rata equivalent to 18 candidates having stepped forward to try and replace Boris Johnson in 2022.
In that contest, Rishi Sunak released a video telling party members to decide ‘who is the best person to defeat Keir Starmer and the Labour party at the next election?’, then adding: ‘I’m the only candidate who can do that.’ A new career as a futurologist clearly doesn’t beckon for him. So perhaps it should not surprise us to find unwarranted levels of self-belief persist in the Conservative parliamentary party.
With the best will in the world, it is difficult indeed to see any of the three weakest candidates as being future prime ministerial material. Mel Stride and James Cleverly radiate the weary man-of-the-world vibe of pragmatic chaps in late middle age who have come belatedly to realise that the boss class were all bluffing it as much as they ever were. Priti Patel meanwhile put forward an opening pitch big on tributes to the grassroots membership and fetishising 'unity' but almost entirely devoid of vision or ideas.
So one assumes that the party will ultimately alight instead on a Young Lochinvar with a dash of panache, which in this contest means Tom Tugendhat, Robert Jenrick or Kemi Badenoch. Tugendhat is the archetypal Blue Wall Tory from a distinguished establishment dynasty – a One Nationer and supporter of European integration frantically seeking to acquire right-wing credentials. Are the remnants of the British inside right ready to be led by a Tom from Tonbridge? There seem to be enough MPs who share his sensibilities to put him on the final ballot, though in private the biggest enthusiasts for a new era of 'Tommy Tug Toryism' may be the Faragistas of Reform: they think their boss would eat him for breakfast.
It is the working assumption of many good judges that one out of Jenrick and Badenoch will face off against Tugendhat in the final round – in which ordinary party members get to vote – and that whichever it is will win. Jenrick bailed out of conventional centrist Conservatism last autumn after coming to believe that it was unfit to deal with the challenges thrown up by an era of mass migratory flows. He is one of perhaps 20 MPs in the entire House of Commons to openly espouse withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights and the jurisdiction of its supervisory court in Strasbourg. It is a very good issue to own for the latter stages of this contest, as evidenced by Tugendhat’s unconvincing hints that even he might one day get on board with it.
That leaves us with Badenoch, the breakout star of the leadership contest of summer 2022. Despite the efforts of Nadine Dorries to depict her as the tame creature of a clique of shadowy Svengalis who possess magical powers to decide almost everything, most Tory members can see she has got something. Via the simple recourse of waiting for everyone else to make their initial pitches before she made hers, she also ensured it picked up on the weaknesses of her opponents and landed as the most impressive. Two simple points elevated her above the others: first that just calling for 'unity' is vacuous until it has been decided what the appropriate political platform that merits uniting around is. Secondly that: 'We can’t control immigration until we reconfirm our belief in the nation-state and the sovereign duty it has, above all else, to serve its own citizens.'
That sounds like the start of an argument based on principles that must lead to her endorsing, alongside Jenrick, our departure from the ECHR so that proper border control, deportations and citizen preference are all re-legitimised. Some people are on the pitch. Perhaps, for the Tories, it is not all over.
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