Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Cleverly out of Tory Leadership Race
In the game of political prognostication, it is rare when just about everyone is wrong. Yet, that is exactly what has happened in the Conservative Party leadership fight in the UK. The ballot today was to whittle the last three candidates down to two, and the conventional wisdom until an hour or so ago was that James Cleverly (a moderate) would go through on the strength of the surge his support showed yesterday. The other candidate would be either Kemi Badenoch of the far right and Rob Jenrick of the hard right. Mr. Cleverly, though, is out, and the activists will get to choose between Ms. Badenoch and Mr. Jenrick. It also means the Tories have lost the next election, which is still more than four years away.
Mr. Cleverly won yesterday with 39 votes but today could only muster 37. Ms. Badenoch, who was third yesterday with 30 votes, finished first today with 42. Mr. Jenrick came second both times with 41 today and 31 yesterday. The 20 members who voted for tom Tugendhat yesterday do not seem to have moved in any one direction.
So how did just about everyone get it wrong? The key number to know here is 41. That is how many votes would be needed in the last ballot to secure a spot in the final two. Arithmetically speaking, Mr. Cleverly was just two votes shy of that yesterday, and picking up two more should have been possible. The fact that he lost two votes relative to yesterday suggests something occurred that was not obvious.
Since the ballot was secret, it is not possible to say for certain, but one can offer a hypothesis. Mr. Cleverly's total yesterday came from some supporters of the other two backing him in the hopes of hurting the other rightist candidate. Today, they left his camp for their real home. It is possible many of Mr. Tugendhat's supporters backed him today, but they were not numerous enough to keep his hopes alive. He was seen as the continuation candidate, rather unfairly. That is not what the Tories wanted.
Be that as it may, the Tories are now committed to two candidates both of whom would make Margaret Thatcher look like a Labourite. It does not matter much which of the two becomes part leader. The policies both would pursue are designed to appeal to people who have left the Conservatives for the Reform Party. If successful, they simply pick up some votes on the right while losing votes on the left. If unsuccessful, they will lose votes on the right as well.
Tim Stanley, writing in the Telegraph, stated ". . . what's needed is a complete revolution in the Conservative Party. They will never win so long as the centre-Right is split; their chief job is to win back Reform voters. Do that and they can start to attract Lib Dems and Labour supporters, too." Mr. Stanley is wrong. If the next leader wins over Reform voters, he or she will do so in a way that alienates the LibDems and Labour. It could even get less right-wing Tories to give up on the party.
Posting on X, Sir Roger Gale, who has represented the Herne Bay and Sandwich (previously North Thanet, in Kent) since 1983, said, "I fear that many loyal members of the Conservative Party will feel disenfranchised by this result: I have to date not declared my endorsement and I do not propose to do so now.
"But the figures are not decisive and although one candidate -- James Cleverly -- has been eliminated the Parliamentary Party has sent a very confused message to those who will now have to lead not only the Party but the Official Opposition in the House of Commons."
Or as Reform leader Nigel Farage said it, "What you see is not what you get with Kemi, she certainly has a lack of social charms on a level rarely seen in the western world. Jenrick wants to be Nigel Farage, so he'd better come for some training."
Elections are won in the center, and a run to the right is not what the Tories need to do. Maybe the leader after this one will win an election.
© Copyright 2024 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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