Neoliberal centrist dad, episode 4

Then there were two - why Tory MPs picking Jenrick and Badenoch as the final candidates to be their next leader might mean political suicide for the most successful political project in the history of the western world

This summer, following the general election, I was stunned by Tory friends I spoke to who were so blasé about what had just happened to their party. The left of the Conservative party in particular were unbelievably relaxed about the future. “Cleverly will win, we’ll tack to the centre, we’ll roll over Starmer at the next election, everything will be fine,” was basically the gist of what I heard. I thought it was, to say the least, taking the situation lightly - lo and behold, yesterday proved me right.

If the Tories have either a long stint in the wilderness from here or worse for them, are destroyed completely, part of the evaluation as to how that happened has to come down to the left of the Conservative Party as compared to the right of the Labour Party during the Corbyn era. From 2015 through early 2020, the Labour moderates felt like they were involved in a war, one in which the existential survival of everything they believe to be right and true was under threat. There was no bullshit about it - the stakes were life and death, no mistake about it. They were willing to fight with everything they had and they understood without fail who their enemy was. This is why they won in the end.

By contrast, the Tory moderates have always taken their situation way, way, way too lightly. “It’ll all come good,” they’ve always said, as Nigel Farage brushes past them at a centre-right reception. “Nothing to worry about.”

This is the real reason that Jenrick and Badenoch, who, let’s be clear here, were the worst two candidates standing to be the next Tory leader by 100,000 miles, are the only two candidates left standing. The Tory left have never understood that they are in a war that has to be won. And that some of their enemies are within their own party, like it or not.

There are a lot of aspects of this leadership contest that feel eerily like Truss 2022. The Tory MPs had a golden opportunity to take Badenoch out of the contest on Tuesday, when the field was whittled down to three. She’d had a terrible conference, one which should have set alarm bells ringing with even fairly right-wing Tory MPs. It was also in the interests of Cleverly, Tugendhat and Jenrick that she go out, and surely between them all, they could have figured a way to engineer that, particularly given the whole of the Tory parliamentary party can now fit in one room with a bit of squishing up. But no, they allowed her to go through. And in doing so, they have gifted her a clear run with the membership.

Starmer and his team will have been overjoyed at this result - and rightly so. I don’t think Cleverly could have won a general election, but he could have run it close and given the government some headaches along the way. Either Jenrick or Badenoch will be a gift to Labour. And a huge one given the growing pains of this government. To have either Bobby Generic or someone who, as someone once brilliantly put, “could find an enemy in an empty room” as leader makes you wonder if the person Tory MPs really love is Keir Starmer.

This Tory leadership contest has been a shit show so far and will clearly only get worse from here. Cleverly wouldn’t have been a great leader, and certainly wouldn’t have won a general election, but at least he wouldn’t have been the equivalent of political suicide. The worst thing I can say about Jenrick v Badenoch from a Tory perspective is that it would have made the leaderships of Labour, the Lib Dems and Reform all explode with joy. As they are becoming used to doing, the Conservative Party keeps handing out massive gifts to their political enemies. Those foes will happily take them, so long as the Tory candy shop keeps doling them out.