Falling somewhere between The Apprentice and MMA/UFC in format and ratings, the British Tory Leadership campaign draws to a close this week. This follows several rounds of voting by Conservative MPs, with a candidate eliminated at every stage until the field had narrowed from six to two. The final choice rests with the wider Conservative Party membership. The result will be announced on Nov. 2.
That leader, either Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick, will have a task of Herculean magnitude ahead, and of quite possibly Sisyphean endurance, too. They must imagine themselves happy, but it will take some grit.
Are these the last two surprises, though? James Cleverly was looking well placed until what appears to have been some sorely misjudged tactical voting by his supporters in the last round — essentially a “Weakest Link” type effort to make sure he faced the less able candidate in the final head-to-head. But ultimately, one suspects, Cleverly’s spiceless “more of the same” continuity-candidature was unlikely to rekindle the flame, however genial he might be. After the blood bath of July, that will not do.
So, Badenoch — feisty, fierce, outspoken, London-born but largely raised in Lagos by Nigerian parents, a computer engineering graduate, an articulate and implacable enemy of “woke,” but less clarion, perhaps, on immigration and turning around Britain’s sclerotic economy and bloated public sector — is up against Robert Jenrick, in many ways a more conventional Conservative, privately educated, a first in political science at Cambridge then practicing law with Skadden Arps and a former director of prestigious auction house Christie’s, but something of a prodigal son to the Right.
Jenrick was seen as rather wet under Boris Johnson, but his attitude to immigration, law and order and asylum, in particular, have visibly stiffened and hardened in real time during this campaign. And his avowed recognition both of Israel’s legitimacy and moral rectitude, and of Canada’s Pierre Poilievre as his personal role model, Poilievre’s party the template for the direction he’d like to see his take, are a significant evolution.
Badenoch and Jenrick are now trying to persuade the party membership, but also the wider public, that they have heard and understood a discernible, coherent message in the anguished roar of despair that saw them turfed out of government in July with less dignity than Springfield’s Barney can usually expect of Moe. And they must do so without attracting a “yellow card” from the village elders of the 1922 committee, for briefing against their opponent and punching below the waist. No yellow cards have yet been brandished, although it is widely felt that both candidates have transgressed.
They must carve out policies and positions, but more subtly perhaps, redefine their party’s essence, their core propositions, to distinguish themselves not just from the new government, but from the burned-out wreck in the rear view mirror, the one smoking in the ditch of their recent humiliation, their worst result by many metrics in the party’s entire history.
The new leader must galvanize, rebuild and remoralize (if that’s a word) a constituency that is still in shock and quite possibly in denial.
What was once seen as the most fearsome election-winning machine in the West — only one Labour leader had won a general election against the Tories since 1974 — has succumbed to a series of largely self-inflicted wounds in the last few years, leaving a deeply unimpressive Labour front bench the opportunity to barely break step in scooping up the spoils.
A huge challenge, then, for Kemi B., or Robert J., albeit one made marginally less daunting by the almost comical levels of shabbiness, mismanagement and tone-deaf messaging that have characterized the new Labour government. From their high-handedness in dealing with civil unrest during the summer, to the revelations of largesse from wealthy donors of the kind they had been puritanical in denouncing in the former administration, to a budget of eye-watering severity, their first four months in power may well go down in history as 120 Days of Sod ‘em. There is at least a morsel of comfort in that.
You might think that such an epochal defeat as the Tories suffered in July would at least illuminate the source of the failure. But no. It merely raises the pitch, the heat of the debate.
And so as always post-defeat, the fundamental question confronting the losing party is whether to attempt to regain the centre ground, or re-state its core principles and put, between itself and the enemy, what is often referred to as “clear blue water”— somewhat ironically, on this occasion, since the rarity of actual clear blue water in Britain’s sewage-befouled rivers and coastal waters was one of the most illustrative scandals of the previous administration.
This year has, however, been unusual in one regard — namely, that disaffected Tory voters did have an alternative other than either Labour or staying at home, through which to express their dissatisfaction. Namely, Nigel Farage’s Reform Party. This they did, in unambiguous terms.
Reform secured fully 14 per cent of the vote, though the largely benign eccentricities of Britain’s First Past the Post system meant that this translated into less than one per cent of MPs. Had the Conservatives formed a tactical voting alliance with Reform, much less an actual coalition, they might very easily have won the day, especially if one factors in those who, feeling utterly dejected and betrayed by the Tories, declined to vote at all. However, having agreed to stand aside in Tory seats at the 2019 general election, Farage was in no mood to help the Conservatives this time around.
In theory, the Reform Party has a full spectrum of political positions, on everything from NHS funding to Net Zero, all laid out in a manifesto which no-one reads any more than they do those of the big grown up parties.
In reality, Reform is very close to a single-issue party, and that issue is immigration. And even then, it is, in reality, a support structure for a single, highly charismatic figure, perhaps the most divisive to be elected since Margaret Thatcher.
Nigel Farage, a foaming pint of real ale in human form, was not single-handedly responsible for Brexit — by common consensus it was Boris Johnson swinging behind it that made the difference. But he is seen as the man who has for the longest time, and with the most indefatigable patience and indifference to liberal opprobrium, been shouting from the battlements about the ever-growing threat of immigration, both legal and illegal, to the British way of life.
The last few years of the Tory government, especially and paradoxically since Brexit, saw an escalation of numbers coming into the country, the last two in particular taking it to a pitch that feels almost surreal, though might of course be all too familiar to Canadians.
It is this issue which has driven not only Reform’s success, but the sudden and unmistakable rise of various “far” right parties across Europe — again somewhat ironically, given that Brexit was perceived to be largely a gesture of impatience with Europe’s failure to acknowledge and confront that issue.
It is in grappling with this that the Tories are most likely to win back support from Reform, albeit at the risk of alienating their more liberal core, looking only for stability and economic competence. And it is presumably this calculation which has ratcheted Jenrick’s rhetoric on those issues, and seen him as unconcerned as is Poilievre or, indeed, Donald Trump, to be branded as a “populist” or worse. However, Jenrick is a former immigration minister who claims to have been mugged by reality, and he resigned from government strongly objecting to the approach of his erstwhile close friend Rishi Sunak.
Badenoch, on the other hand, has at least as many deeply committed supporters from the “One Nation” tendency, a warmer and, I suspect, more universally engaging personality — in public at least — and also the advantage of landing an undeniable thwack on the conk of the Labour Party, who have yet to elect a single female leader, let alone one of colour.
Having seen their virtual demise on America’s Independence Day, there is a pleasing symmetry to the realization that the Tory party will learn of their likely fate for the next four years in the same week as the United States. By the time they know who they will be dealing with in that regard, of course, it will be too late. But either way, if Poilievre enjoys the success pundits anticipate for him next year, he can expect a good many more fact-finding missions from Westminster, either way.
Simon Evans is a comedian, broadcaster on BBC Radio and GB News, and a regular columnist for spiked! among others. On X @TheSimonEvans
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