We are down to the last 2 of the Conservative leadership contest: Badenoch and Jenrick. Two authoritarian right wingers, two cosplay Farages in Halloween fancy dress.
The most sensible candidate left in the race, James Cleverley, lost out by 2 votes, apparently a cock up by his supporters who thought he was certain of a place in the last 2, and lent their votes to Jenrick to keep Badenoch off the ballot.
The last 2 go to a vote of members, who will most likely choose the maddest, which is likely to be Badenoch, unless her skin colour puts enough of them off. This isn’t as crazy as Corbyn becoming Labour leader – it is even madder, more like Rebecca Long Bailey and Richard Burgon competing for the leadership.
It is hard to imagine a worse outcome for the UK. Labour have made a mess of their first 100 days, and we desperately need a functioning opposition to keep them straight. The Tories need to sort their shit out fast – Labour will grow into power and make fewer unforced errors. They may have lost by a landslide but the political landscape is uncertain, and lots of seats were won and lost of tiny majorities. Even a modest recovery could see them winning back lots of seats.
The Conservative Party historically was an incredibly successful election winning machine. It would occasionally find itself losing elections but only after a long period of power; 14 years this time, 18 years for Thatcher and Major. The rest of the time it won.
The key to their success is pragmatism. They valued power above all else and were prepared to reinvent themselves to get it. Ideology was something Labour did, and which frequently kept the left on the sidelines arguing about intellectual minutiae while the Tories got on with the business of Government.
That didn’t mean that the Tories didn’t have ideas, or that they could be dogmatic in pursuit of them, but they were ruthless in discarding those ideas when they didn’t appeal to voters.
Over the last 14 years 2 set of ideas captured the Conservative Party:
- A radical free market ideology, which raised obtuse economic theories like the Laffer Curve, trickle down economics and the Efficient Market Hypothesis into unquestionable tenets of faith.
- Brexit, a project of national renewal, which handily freed Britain from any kind of European guardrails that restricted our ability to slash and burn our economy
Niether of these ideas emerged spontaneously from within the Conservative Party. They were the products of a sustained campaign by right wing think tanks with opaque funding, and their chums in the media. But despite being cuckoos in the Tory nest they became dogma.
They caught hold mostly because there wasn’t much else to believe in. Cameron tried soft left on social policy/hard right on economics. Boris Johnson tried soft left on economics/hard right on social policy. Neither worked.
Brexit and free market radicalism both failed spectacularly. What has filled the void is immigration, aggressive nativism, often becoming outright xenophobia. There is nothing left to talk about, no ideas to fix Britains problems beyond authoritarianism.
The majority of people, left and right, are positive about immigration, that is they at least recognise that it is necessary for a functioning economy, and they live in communities that are comfortable with their own diversity. They don’t really care about culture wars, or nostalgic fantasies of a socially conservative past.
But for a minority of voters fear of immigration, or fear of immigrants is a hugely powerful motivation. It doesn’t really matter if the anti-immigrant messaging is true or false, what matters is that it amplifies the concerns of that minority, and validates their fears.
There is a real important value behind these sentiments. In time of war defending the group from outsiders is heroic. That is why images of past conflicts and previous sacrifices are juxtaposed with images of a lovely white Britain polluted by immigrants, specifically Muslim. The people demonising immigrants really do think deep down they are like Spitfire pilots, or D-Day commandos.
But Britain doesn’t need angry balding men to defend us, and the Tories will never be able to compete with Farage and Reform who will always make crazier claims and propose dafter solutions. Nor does it need culture warriors trying to police peoples views. This is the same problem Labour had under Corbyn, it talked about issues that it’s members and activists cared about, not the issues voted care about.
The US right long ago went on a long march into a fantasy world of overheated suspicion, conspiratorial fantasy. Badenoch and Jenrick are competing to lead the UK Conservatives into a similar wilderness. One already colonised by Reform. A fantasy world full of scary foreigners and endless betrayal.
With only 120 Tory MPs only a few dozen are enough to force a leadership election. Which means that whoever wins the prize might not enjoy it for too long. I doubt whoever wins next month will lead them into the next election.
After 14 years of chaotic Tory Government it’s not trendy to say nice things about the Conservative Party. But once upon a time the Tories were the party of duty and respect. The valued public service and honesty. They were straight forward and pragmatic, even if they could be snobby and racist.
Hard to see any of those values in the Parliamentary Conservative Party right now.
Wouldn’t it be reasonable to suggest that by electing Badenoch (a black female Diet Farage which certainly couldn’t compete with white male full-fat Farage) the Tory party membership (most of whom have personal politics closer to Reform than to the Tory MPs) were effectively euthanizing their own party for Reform’s benefit?
After all, Reform is a much stronger player for the Red Wall than the Tories, because they don’t have the baggage of being seen as “the party which shut the pits”.
Picking any kind of Farage-a-like was a disaster for the Tories. The ‘establishment’ which sustained the Conservatives for over a century have shifted to embrace Farage and white nationalism
I’ve also seen the view expressed that one reason why Badenoch is probably the worst Leader of the Opposition in living memory, is because she is fundamentally un-British.
While Badenoch was born in London (and thus qualified for citizenship in a UK that hadn’t yet abolished birthright citizenship) she grew up in Nigeria and the United States, and had no real interest in Britain per se until she attended a Conservative event in 2005, inspired by personal ambition and War on Terror ideology.
And while many true-blue Tories dislike London and other big cities, at least they show genuine affection for the rural “Deep England” they identify with, while Badenoch doesn’t really identify with anywhere in Britain. Badenoch rarely leaves London, perhaps due to being a global elite wannabe (contrast with actual global elite member Rishi Sunak, which AIUI is a pretty decent constituency MP) and has few interests outside politics (which is based almost entirely on US culture wars rather than actual British issues): in that respect she’s also similar to Liz Truss, who (likely under the influence of US Republicans on social media) named her daughter “Liberty” and got her interested in guns.