Following Conservative Party conference earlier this month James Cleverly was widely expected to be the favourite to win the Tory leadership election – moderate, charismatic, experienced, popular – he had it all in the bag. Yet on the final ballot of Tory MPs he fell from first place to third, and was therefore kicked out of the final ballot of two candidates for party members to vote between. What on Earth happened?

For a man called Cleverly – Member of Parliament for Braintree, you’d expect him to have at least a sensible amount of political intelligence. However shortly following the shock news of his departure from the race rumours began circulating Westminster of Cleverly supporters supposedly being told by the campaign to “tactically” back Robert Jenrick to be in the final two as Cleverly “had it in the bag” – fearing that a race against hard-right candidate Kemi Badenoch could result in Cleverly losing the membership vote. Of course this isn’t the only theory – we may never know exactly what happened behind closed doors – but it would explain the surprise dip in Cleverly backers whilst he was riding high and expecting an even bigger boost from moderate Tugendhat supporters.

To put this all in context, Cleverly’s campaign mainly centred around uniting the party to win back socially liberal voters who deserted the Tories in favour of Labour and the Lib Dems, urging his colleagues to be “more normal”, to focus on the real priorities of voters rather than leaning into the “culture war” rhetoric of the far-right. By contrast Kemi Badenoch spent the conference attacking maternity pay as “excessive” and Robert Jenrick baselessly accused British armed forces of “killing instead of capturing” terrorists – using this as an excuse to leave the European Court of Human Rights. This, of course, is designed to woo the right-wing base of the Tory membership, as well as targeting Reform UK supporters – although this will likely be in vain as most Reform voters voted so as either a protest vote to the Tory government or out of loyalty to Nigel Farage – rather than the suspected lust for hard-right policies – it seems likely that by shifting to the right the Tories will only lose more moderate voters to Labour and the Lib Dems whilst continuing to shed votes to Reform on the right.

So who are the candidates? Well Ms Badenoch is most well known for leading the fight in a Twitter spat against “Doctor Who” actor David Tennant on transgender rights – not much else to say really.

“Honest Bob” Jenrick on the other hand appears to be the result of typing in “Right-wing Tory candidate” into ChatGPT – just about willing to pivot on any issue in order to earn the respect of the membership without having any real charisma or personality – earning himself the aptly considered title among peers, Robert Generic.

Although Ms Badenoch holds the lead among party members and is likely to win the contest by the end of the month, ultimately it probably doesn’t matter who becomes Tory leader as neither candidate looks likely to carry the Tories to the next election – let alone to an election victory. That being said, Keir Starmer will be pleased with the news of a complacent extremist becoming Tory leader – lending him a wide open goal following a tough first few months of his government dealing with the mess left behind by the last lot.

Additionally Ed Davey will be excited by the news of the Tories fading into political irrelevance, eyeing up more suburban socially left-leaning and economically right-leaning Tory seats to supplant himself as de-facto leader of the opposition to Labour.

Ava

Political enthusiast