AND then there were three…

Finally, after what feels like an eternity – certainly long enough for the new government to semi-implode – we have reached the business end of the Conservative party leadership contest.

Poor Tom Tugendhat has been eliminated from the contest. Thankfully, the votes of MPs are not subject to the ECHR, or they (Rob Jenrick) might have had to kill him rather than just force him to sell himself out further by backing one of the remaining candidates…

No, it was not to be for Tommy Two Hats. I came up with what I’m sure you’ll agree is an incredibly witty and insightful nickname in response to his efforts to contort himself to be the centrist sensible people crave (one hat), as well as the man to stand up against those darned human rights lawyers who keep insisting all human beings do indeed have, well, rights (hat number two). But if I have to explain it…

Anyway, he was always likely to fall while trying to walk that particularly thin tightrope.

Yet as someone looking on with a morbid curiosity from the stalls, I applaud the audacity of the trapeze artist trying to pull it off, before they succumb to a rather sad landing in the safety net of the backbenches…

And therein lies the problem for these wannabe leaders; none of them is actually showing any inclination to lead. On anything.

The ‘leadership contest’ is a complete misnomer, on every conceivable level.

Case in point: Who is prepared to stand up and be honest about why the Conservatives actually lost the last election? No one.

In fact, if you saw, heard or read any coverage of the recent Tory party conference, you’d be hard pushed to believe they lost at all, such was the bonhomie with which delegates lapped up the sermons of two-bit preachers such as Liz ‘I could have won it’ Truss (who seems to have forgotten she lost her own seat, for crying out loud).

No, these folks have managed to convince themselves – helped by Daily Mail headlines about free clothes and luxury eyewear – that contrary to popular belief (note: popular), the Conservatives achieved their worst election result in modern history because, wait for it, *they weren’t Conservative enough*.

Yes, that’ll be it. The centre-left Labour party swept to a huge, huge majority, and the even-more-centre-left Liberal Democrats to their highest-ever seats tally by being more conser-, no, wait, hang on, what are we talking about again? Liz, Liz, come back over here and tell me about the blob…

And so it goes.

The party seems completely incapable of facing the fact it lost. And lost huge. That people did not want what it was offering. It wanted them gone.

This was a gathering where members and MPs alike should have taken stock of their election whooping and had a debate about how they might appeal to more voters in future.

Instead, they took drinks and told each other people did want what they want but are too stupid to undertand it’s what they want and probably just need it shouted at them louder.

It’s a party mirroring an opiniated old uncle who thinks that because he’s wealthy, he’s always right. End of. That’s it. Shut up.

Oh, and maternity pay is excessive too. No, really.

You couldn’t make it up. However, that’s what Kemi accused journalists of doing about her maternity pay comments – until they played her the tape.

For clarity’s sake, in an interview with Times Radio, she said: “Maternity pay varies, depending on who you work for. But statutory maternity pay is a function of tax. Tax comes from people who are working. We’re taking from one group of people and giving to another. This, in my view, is excessive.”

When people actually listened to her words and dared to ask her about them, she denied she’d said anything about maternity pay at all, and we were all being silly, saying: “Contrary to what some have said, I clearly said the burden of regulation on businesses had gone too far … of course I believe in maternity pay!”

Yes, of course, clearly that’s what you said. That’s fine then, another glass please…

Kemi was perhaps channelling the fighting spirit of Liz ‘I probably would have won it if I hadn’t crashed the economy and lost my own seat and lived in a parallel dimension’ Truss (still ranked among the most unpopular politicians ever in the UK, by the way, but those people are probably idiots, right Liz?).

But the membership loves her, because she ‘tells it like it is’, and is ‘not scared of a fight’ – and she’s not. For example, how many MPs would choose to cross their arms – like an arrogant, over-confident buffoon on the latest series of The Apprentice – on their official Parliamentary portrait? It’s true, Google it…

Alas, amid all this apparent positivity – if you can call it that – there didn’t seem to be one person saying, ‘Hang on, hang on, can we talk about the possibility – silly I know – that people actually didn’t want to vote for us and that maybe that says something?’.

Nah, not a bit of it.

Big James Cleverly (is he big? I’ve not met him, but he emits ‘bigness’) went closest to suggesting that, maybe, could we just perhaps consider, the party might need to be a teensy-bit different going forward, compared to the basket case of bonkers announcements and betting scandals of recent years?

And he was rewarded – at least in the media and it seemed in the conference hall – for daring to suggest it. In any sensible Conservative world, he would be streets ahead of any other contender.

But this is not a sensible Conservative world.

The favourite is Robert Jenrick, who seems to have found his inner and outer skinhead, in both looks and political outlook.

Ah, how we all love a ‘political journey’ these days.

I’m not sure how much it actually is that the political beliefs they formed over decades have now, suddenly, moved waaaaaaaay over to the right, or simply code for, ‘I need to pretend I believe this stuff or they’ll boot me out of the party’.

It seems not to matter, because none of them will challenge the narrative. No one wants to rock the boat. No one wants to lead.

And that’s because they want to get into the final two, which is when the Conservative party membership ultimately picks the leader.

Yes, it is them who really leads.

They – or the half dozen or so who vote in polls on the Conservative Home website, it seems – really shape the actions of this merry band of leadership lottery contestants.

And my word, these party members are a vicious bunch, hell bent on pursuing a similarly aggressive right-wing approach in the years to come.

Theirs is a Conservative party that resents ‘human rights’ laws, that longs to ‘stop the boats’ and wants to confront ‘illegal immigration’ with extreme measures, fears contracting the ‘woke mind virus’, doesn’t see why they should pay any tax at all, or maternity pay (actually, scrap that, I don’t know where I heard it…), and wants more of the same, please, but much louder!

They want populism and they want it now.

And no matter how unrealistic and ludicrous their wants are, these candidates are loathe to deny them, because they want the job.

READ MORE: OPINION: “I’m not angry, Prime Minister, I’m just disappointed…”

But the rise of Big James (that’s his name now, I’ve decided) gives us some hope of a sensible, if not wholly realistic discussion as we move through this process.

Although, in a way, if people actually think he would be the best choice as leader, they should probably hope he loses this time round. Because the leader appointed immediately after an election drubbing – no matter how effective and competent they are (William Hague, anyone?) – rarely ends up taking them back to power.

No, it’s like a right of passage that, fresh from a drubbing, the losing party lurches to some insanely unpopular place with the next leader – as if to expose the idiocy of the party membership’s cravings – before returning to somewhere approaching the potential of winning an election.

So, in the absence of any kind of leadership other than that picked by an incredibly small number of party members, the best hope for Tories looking for a return to competitive politics is for honest Bob ‘skinhead on a political journey’ Jenrick to win this one, and Big James to pick up the pieces before the next election…

In fact, it’s a shame Liz did lose her seat, as she’d have been the perfect contender for leader now – when she could get absolutely nowhere near any levers of power whatsoever. This is a contest she probably could have won, unlike her own seat and that of public opinion, as opposed to the opinion of Conservative party members and the editors of the Daily Mail and the Torygraph.

Instead, I can see it now, the Here’s How We Would Have Won It Tour 2029 (and accompanying podcast series), with Robert Jenrick and Liz Truss – coming soon to a village hall near you…

PAUL JONES
Editor in Chief
Do you agree? You can email me at paul@blackmorevale.net. Just try and be nice. Thanks!