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August 12, 2024 - 10:00am
What is it with the Conservative leadership contenders? They appear to have entered into a pact of vapid mutual plagiarism.
Just look at their campaign websites. Tom Tugendhat promises to “unite, rebuild, and win”; whereas James Cleverly says he will “unite to deliver” (while also making clear he’s “ready to win)”. Priti Patel insists “we must unite to win”. Meanwhile, Mel Stride’s slogan is “trust, change, win”, but just in case anyone thinks he might be the disunity candidate, he also pledges to “unite and lead”.
Can we can rely on the insurgent Right-winger, Robert Jenrick, to offer to something different? Evidently not. His slogan is “change, win, deliver”. He then promises to “unite the party”. But, of course.
Only Kemi Badenoch’s campaign website looks like it wasn’t regurgitated by ChatGPT from the other five. It’s also good to see words like “truth” and “responsibility” feature upfront — makes a change from all that unity and winning.
But does the lack of meaningful content matter right now? At this stage in the contest, the candidates’ priority is not winning over the public or even the Conservative membership, but rather their fellow MPs. Early next month, the first set of MPs’ ballots will reduce the number of candidates from six to four. So, until then, the real campaign is taking place, via mobile, on the sun loungers of Europe and the Caribbean.
And yet as they interrupt their colleagues’ holidays, the candidates ought to keep track of opinion back home. Take the latest ConservativeHome survey of party members. Badenoch has a clear lead and is all-but-guaranteed a place in the final four. Jenrick will also likely get through. By contrast, the dutiful, but obscure, Mel Stride is trailing badly.
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SubscribeDo you know there was a pandemic and war started on the border of Europe? You appear to have omitted these issues. Why is that?
Sadly none of them are promising to repeal the climate change act.
The right candidate would be too bright to suggest that – but be more than happy to do it when they won the election.
Like Keir Starmer/Rachel Reeves…
Exactly, time to tune out and wait for people to wake up a bit.. Althougg If tata steel debacle didnt make you up to the pointlessness of this current lit, nothing will
Frankly, given that Cameron snatched the leadership from David Davies, an eminently more suitable candidate on account of his pragmatism and business experience, by giving a better ‘speech’ to conference suggests that camera ready oratorical performances might not be the best way to judge a candidate for high office. Going further back, to Cameron’s twin, Blair, simply confirms my skepticism about performative politics.
They’re caught by the knowledge the Tory membership gets to decide and they are clearly abnormal and not representative of the broader public. They’ll pull the decision to the Right, but to win back power the Tories have to tack back away from the rhetoric and nonsense they’ve vomited on immigration and boats to cost of living and public services – the real causes of dissatisfaction. So how does a prospective Leader navigate this?
Probably much like Starmer did with Labour – with some benign politics and realism. But it’s got even more complicated for the candidates because the Riots have made any sympathetic utterances, that might play well with the ‘blue rinse golf club Tory’ member types and the ‘Reform attracted’ seem completely out of keeping with the Country and just a form of Faragism.
They do though deserve to be trapped. All failed to be honest about the choices needed on legal migration when in power. Pretty much all failed to be honest the Boats is a problem we can’t solve alone too. And some used language that was a gift to the racists and agent provocateurs on the Far Right. They know that hence so quiet, and probably secretly regretful too.
You seem to have missed all the recent polling showing that immigration is a leading concern across the population, including amongst Labour voters.
It is. But it’s about how you speak about it and how you engage with honesty on why the Legal migration been so high and why the Boats aren’t going to stop with us acting alone. That’s why they are stuck. They can’t use the inflammatory stuff. They have to properly engage and not use the subject just to for electoral gain
Utter tosh. Starmer and Cooper did not ‘engage honestly’ with the public at the election. They lied and lied beyond cynically, pretended that Action Man Keir would be leading SAS black ops across a Europe in flames to terrify and set on fire the people smuggling mafia. A pity we do not have any jurisdiction over the channel. Pathetic. Weedy Rishi ran away rather than confront the dominant ultra progressives in our State, corrupted legal & immigration system and the flaky shadowy nutjobs in ICJ and ECHR. But at least he knew that this trade waa illegal, needed an urgent deterrent and to be stopped if the social contract was to be protected. The real Two Tier Asylum Human Rights junkie Starmer Zedong gets power and instantly smashes the Rwanda deterrrent, the Bibby and anti terrorist legislation for social housing. Open Borders at last!! The Tories have 5 years to prepare a viable policy to end this insanity, starting at the UN with the reform of its outdated destructive laws on refugees and asylum. Illegal migration will kill Starmerism at birth, as will their upcoming Neanderthal attack on personal and business wealth, prosperity and growth.
Just to play with this for a moment – we step away from UNHCR – do the Boats stop?
And even with a Rwanda taking a few hundred, do they stop?
Every tried to land a plane in a country that refuses you permission if you are trying to return illegals?
The desperate will still take their chances and the smuggler will convey the risks are minimal.
What might stop them is if the smuggler is in prison and you can’t buy a rubber dingy for love or money without a special licence etc
Problem is you don’t engage with practical solutions/options and prefer infective.
Do stop being so silly!
The reason your narrative makes no sense is that fewer people voted for Starmer than voted for Corbyn. There is clearly even less enthusiasm for his reheated Blairism than there was for Corbyn’s tired brand of antisemitic syndicalism. He just got lucky. A better man might exploit that but Keir doesn’t have the cojones. He’s a pandering creep who will cave to the special interests at every stage. We know that because that’s what he did as DPP.
Kemi will walk all over him.
Your last sentence would have sufficed.
92% of the electorate did not vote for Reform. That tells us alot too.
As regards Kemi, I quite like her, but her one tough test on the bonfire on EU regs and she showed more common sense than perhaps you’d like. Watch out for the same on others issues if she ever gets power.
I’ve been rooting for Kemi but the recent exposé of her advocating (in 2018) less restriction on immigration (when the Conservative manifesto had promised reduced immigration) gives me pause. So does the fact that her August 2024 response to this exposé is to say “we need to have a conversation” about immigration. I had assumed she understood that what is needed now is a plan to reduce it, not a conversation about it.
As an aside, I find your comments interesting, as you make some good points – but wrap them in some quite bizarre conclusions.
The Conservatives better get on with it. Farage currently appears to be the Leader of the Opposition.
The Tories response to Starmer’s Kim Jong Un turn has been nonexistent.
Keir Jong Un…
Farage seems utterly lost in Parliament with his motley band of 3 other Reform MPs. It’s probably the best way the establishment has found of emasculating him!.
If you are so far off the basic facts: i.e Reform have five MPs and not four – why would anyone bother reading any words you offer. Another explanation is that you have learned your arithmetic at the Diane Abbott school of mathematics.
The advantage Badenoch has is that she is a woman of colour – just the sort of person Labour regards as their own and therefore difficult to paint as a patriarchal racist. However, like Thatcher she comes from a practical science background and is able to analyse and cut through the woke Labour nonsense. How capable she is generally I don’t know. But at least she clearly differentiates herself from the other identikit candidates who seem to be all slogans.
I think she is very wisely keeping a low profile. as The Old saying goes “don’t interrupt the enemy while they’re making mistakes.”
They failed “to specify what actually went wrong”. Two things ‘went wrong’:
1) only about half of the last lot of MPs were actually ‘conservative’ in any meaningful sense of the word.
2) in order to do anything ‘conservative’ about immigration (or anything else) they would – as anyone close to SW1 knows – have needed the guts to radically take on the top-to-toe Woke Civil Service. ….Unherd columnist Peter Franklin reflecting on his own experience of working in two UK government departments comments: “How many of the civil servants that most closely serve this Conservative government are actually Leftwing? Well….I would say approximately all of them”. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/carry-on-governing
All the ignored yapping about ‘party unity first’ demonstrates a basic failure to recognise their status, mission and primary task. The despised runaway Fake Tory Party 2010-24 is as dead as a dodo. Extinct. So appealing to the rabble of insiders left is absurd. At least half of the MPs should be horsewhipped and sent into caring hands of the deranged middle class Lib Dems. No. First a leader must present a radical new vision to the nation. Kemi B has had best start. Tories For Wealth Creation and Capitalism. Denounce Soviet Starmerism and the ghastly plague of progressive class and race hatred they have spawned. Then true followers – the missing millions from election and more – will come. New Vision. Then a New Born Again Party.
Anyone who “unites the MPs” guarantees that the conservatives are lost for a very very long time
‘unbearable lightness’ had quite a lot of affairs and shagging. What is it that Peter Franklin knows about the contest that he’s trying to signal subliminally here?
I remember taking a dislike to Tom Togendhat several months ago…but now I’ve forgotten why.
He looks like basically another Cameron, which is not what the party (or the country) needs now.
Unfortunately, so does the supposedly “more right-wing” Jenrick. Just too bland by half.
I say unfortunately, but that’s fortunate for Badenoch and perhaps her party, because if she doesn’t win the contest the party is finished – whilst she may not be.
His role in the cancelling of our greatest (then) living philosopher, Roger Scruton, is hard to forgive.
I’m not interested in promises or specific details of intended actions. I’d rather have a leader who can communicate a clear vision, offers no platitudes, and demonstrates a willingness to speak the truth. I’d also love to see someone who pushed the idea (to paraphrase JFK) that we should not ask “What can the state do for me?” but rather “What can I do for my fellow citizens?”
I have so far only heard one candidate demonstrating such an approach – KB.
Meh. The conservative party will never be rebuilt unless the death-watch beetle of centrism is thoroughly purged from its timbers; certainly not a task for Tugendhat as he is frankly part of the problem, irrespective of his alleged rhetorical skills.
Of the rest of the paltry crew there is possibly only Badenoch who might act as a foundation stone for reconstruction, but there is an awful lot of dead wood that needs to be removed in the meantime and that is going to be an uphill struggle for her. Beyond this the task is even greater (although the same for all aspiring parties) which is to convince the country as a whole that they have a vision and a plan for a United Britain – a country that inspires hope, aspiration and admiration and rewards those who strive, achieve and create; a country comfortable with its history and confident about the future.
As I say, a significant challenge, given the starting point.
What can the Conservative Party possibly do to “mend its reputation” on inward migration?
All they can do is “promise to reduce it”. They have done that every single manifesto since 2010, and have broken that promise every single time. How on earth do they think anybody is going to believe them ever again?
The Conservative party has a majority of Left wing liberal MP’s and has become a useful whipping horse for the Left while it actually carries out their project of continuing Blair’s policy.
They are done. The Conservative Party is finished. And it is a good thing too. If we are going to have Blairite policy no matter who we elect, then I for one, want to have a Labour label attached to it, so that everybody knows who’s doing the damage.