Grab your drink and your popcorn, the race is under way! On Monday afternoon, when some of us were watching Rachel Reeves but considerably more were watching the Olympics, this year’s instalment of the Conservatives’ leadership wars officially began.
Those who intend to follow every step are advised to make sure they are sitting comfortably – this is going to be a marathon, not a sprint. While in government, the Tories tended to prefer short and bloody contests. Now safely hiding in opposition, they have opted for a process that will last three and a half months, and is likely to feel longer than all our lifetimes put together.
The first stage will last just over a month, and feature every candidate who has managed to get through. As the rest of the country enjoys the warm weather, and the rest of Westminster enjoys a much deserved recess, the party will instead begin ceremonially tearing itself to pieces.
Once that is done and parliament returns, MPs will whittle down the list to four lucky candidates, who will get to keep campaigning for roughly a century and a half, and will be expected to set out their stall at the party’s conference in late September. Amazingly, the contest will only end a whole five weeks after the shindig, with the results being announced at the beginning of November, just days before the US election.
The prize they’re hoping to win? The right to spend four to five years turning to the country and begging them to forget all about Partygate, Brexit, endless infighting and Liz Truss, in the hope that they will vote Tory again. What a treat.
As things stand, one unlucky soldier has already fallen at the first hurdle. Take a moment of silence and bow your head while thinking about Suella Braverman. Suella failed to… sorry, no, decided not to run for leader after all. She made it all very clear in her Daily Telegraph op-ed.
Suella definitely had those 10 nominations needed to get on the initial ballot – despite seven of the 15 MPs who publicly backed her last time no longer being in the Commons.
Who were the courageous 10? Don’t be nosy. It’s unseemly. All you need to know is that they were real. Braverman is very popular and beloved. She just changed her mind. No reason. No, really, stop asking.
Anyway – the party is now left with a dirty half-dozen consisting of Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat, Priti Patel, Robert Jenrick and Mel Stride. Yes, you know, Mel Stride.
The name rings the faintest of bells, doesn’t it? He was a secretary of state for a while. Bit interchangeable, as faces go, which is a shame because his name makes him sound like the lead singer of a post-punk band.
Good old Mel Stride. Once watched me try and fail to open a beer without a bottle opener in the Newsnight green room and chose not to help. That’s a grudge I’ll carry with me for a long time. On the bright side, he’s the race’s 28-1 outsider and thus unlikely to make it to the top four.
Who will be the other person to spend their sunny recess campaigning only to get dropped by their own colleagues the moment parliament returns, then? It’s hard to tell.
Badenoch is currently the frontrunner at 7-4, which feels a tad absurd given how ill-suited she would be to the job. Becoming leader of the opposition after a bruising election defeat is a gig that entails a lot of grinning and bearing it. It doesn’t seem clear that she can do either.
Her obsession with the culture wars is also likely to be an issue. In a recent Times column, she hit out against the left, which promotes “a postmodernism that can best be described as joyless decadence”. Good luck trying to campaign on that when Labour remains relentlessly focused on infrastructure and the economy.
Elsewhere, Cleverly (6-1) and Tugendhat (5-1) are likely to try to relentlessly outdo each other in talking about their time in the army. Once seen as the moderates’ great hope, the latter has already said that he could countenance leaving the European Convention on Human Rights if needed.
The former benefited from a largely uneventful stint as foreign secretary, but is known for his love of colourful and often tasteless jokes, including the one about putting a date rape drug in his wife’s drink. They were edgy when he was a backbencher, but will people find them as entertaining now he’s running for the top job? As for the last two, well, where to start? Patel (8-1) believes she can be the unity candidate, which tells you everything you need to know about where the Conservative Party is at in 2024.
Children’s mural whitewasher Jenrick got glowing write-ups in the right wing press when he cut his hair and lost a bit of weight. What he stands for seems to be “whatever noises he can make to make the members love him”. He is, for some reason, the 5-2 second favourite to win over party members.
On which note – there is a reason why the field is so unappealing, and it is because of the people they are trying to appeal to. There are approximately seven and a half Tory party members left, and a majority of them seem to be somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan. The only way to win is to pander to them.
Of course, it quickly ends up as a vicious circle; the madder the Tories seem, the fewer normal right-of-centre people want to join the party. The fewer of them join, the madder the party becomes – ad nauseam.
Is there a way out? Probably, but it is unlikely that they will find it anytime soon. In the meantime, do remember to pace your drinking. There’s a long, long way to go.
