Those unfortunate to follow the toings and froings of Conservative Party conference should not be the least bit surprised with this outcome. The pol comment consensus, which was right for once, had Cleverly doing well with his speech and capturing momentum. It was the rousing plea of "let us be normal" that won it. Meanwhile, Jenrick and Badenoch suffered self-inflicted wounds and spent vital time staunching their campaigns' lifeblood when they could have glad-handed and schmoozed some more. A reminder that amateur hour is a pastime shared by leading figures of all parties.
Considering the defeated Tugendhat, one can only conclude this was another attempt at jump starting his bid for public prominence. When he entered the 2022 contest, he rhetorically broke with the corrupt legacy of Boris Johnson and promised a "clean start". But the real reason, getting his face known, becoming a player, didn't succeed. As a briefcase Tory, he served in Liz Truss's ill-fated government as security minister and carried on when Rishi Sunak took over. And there he led an undistinguished existence, despite trying to stir the anti-China pot by announcing an investigation into TikTok and its influence. Truly a grey blur, he'll probably be best remembered for his cringe merch than any noted contribution to the Tory party.
So much for the loser, of the three left who might Labour fear the most? Despite the damage done by avarice and unnecessary "tough choices", Keir Starmer is still the beneficiary of popular anti-Toryism and the predicament they are in. If the Tories go right to try and consolidate their base and hoover up Reform's support, that leaves votes toward the centre more or less uncontested. Add to this the antipathy many Reform voters feel towards the Tories, it's by no means certain a strong effort here would put Nigel Farage's concern out of business. But going "centrist" leaves the right flank open for Reform, as well as the door for possible Tory defections. Labour is fortunate because the box the Tories have sealed themselves in is entirely their fault, and their long-term crisis is playing out irrespective of what Starmer and friends do.
Not that left wing Tory watchers have no interest in the outcome. We do. Seeing Jenrick or Badenoch gallop off to the right will only blow more smoke up the backsides of the right wing press, who will be emboldened to go even further right. And because Starmer's Labour is a flimsy construct on an extensive but structurally weak majority, one can imagine the "genius" of Morgan McSweeney will see the government tack right also. The consequence outside of Westminster pantomimes and politics gossip columns will be felt in more scapegoating, a further coarsening of public discourse, more racism, and down the road more of what we saw in the summer. No trust in Cleverly, obviously. He happily supported Johnson, Truss, and Sunak at their racist worst, but a win for him and a defeat for the most demented and politically poisonous section of the Tories might arrest the further mainstreaming of overtly racist politics. Even if only for a brief period. For that reason, one cannot be indifferent about the outcome of the Tory leadership contest.
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3 comments:
Many thanks. It is really important to emphasise that whoever the Tory leader is will shape the direction of Starmer and Labour especially with McSweeney now helping to run things. This dynamic never occured to me, so a really important post to point this out - so many thanks.
(As Threads is being shown tonight on BBC4, maybe a blog post (in your SF review style) on that?!)
A Cleverley win will result in a split of the Tory Parliamentary party, and base to Reform. The Conservative remainder will move back towards the Liberals, and a pro-EU/big business stance, also undermining Blue Labour, Greens etc. It will create the conditions for a new centre-right, pro-EU, social-democratic party to represent the interest of the bourgeoisie, which they lack at the moment. The Blair-rights would probably split and join it at that point too.
A defeat for Cleverley would result in a similar split, and sequence of events, but with the Conservative base and voters first abandoning ship to join up with the Liberals, a further descent into irrelevance of the Tories, and their replacement by Reform, which would probably lead to some kind of merger of the two, but seeing only ghettoisation of their combined forces, stuck on around 30% of the vote, and steadily declining.
With Blue Labour at the time of the election only getting 25% of the potential electorate, and only 34% of the actual vote, and that already having collapsed to below 30%, overtaken even by the Tories, that combined reactionary nationalist, petty-bourgeois ghetto, leaves a further 40% of the electorate to be swept up by a new "progressive", centre-right, pro-EU, conservative social-democratic party or alliance. The Blair-right careerists inside the PLP, would not take long to jump ship into it, thereby rapidly reducing the size, if not immediately wiping it out of Blue Labour.
And he's out! So much for that.
It's going to be one of the frothing lunatics.
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