The departures of Priti Patel and Mel Stride aren't great losses to the Conservative cause. It's been frequently noted by Tory watchers that Patel has led a charmed political life throughout her career, one of those characters who gets promoted and is kept hanging around simply because she's available. Bringing a deft touch of ignorance and arrogance to whatever role the party's power brokers have handed her, she peaked during the Boris Johnson years as his home secretary. The wretched Rwanda scheme was her baby, and she normalised the increasingly racist turn the Tory politics of immigration took. Yet, despite being - for a while - a darling of the diminishing Tory faithful because she manifested their atavistic desires, she played her part in destroying Conservative credibility among right wingers. The so-called Boris wave of migration happened while she channelled BNP election leaflets of the decade before and so, in her own pitiful terms, failed politically. She did have the sense to avoid spending any time in Liz Truss's ill-fated cabinet, and relied on her luck to be appointed to the shadow cabinet after the 2024 catastrophe. For form's sake she's departing to look after relations with other centre right parties around the world. In other words, more time on the ligging circuit for semi-retired failures.
Mel Stride also had the sense to avoid direct involvement in the Truss debacle, and his support for Rishi Sunak (remember him?) was rewarded with the DWP brief. Unfortunately for his legend, he proved something of a grey blur as a minister. Though suggesting, a year after his appointment, that the pension triple lock was unsustainable wasn't the most astute remark ever to be uttered to a Westminster hack. I suppose you could call his leadership run that summer a brief flirtation with prominence, beating Patel into fifth place. But there wasn't really anything he brought to the table except a willingness to do a top job. Perhaps his insubstantial status and wafer thin 61-vote majority is what commended him to Kemi Badenoch. As a former Sunak ally, he brought the remnant of Tory briefcase sensibility - something that would settle the nerves of those discombobulated by their new leader's lurch further to the right. Unfortunately, he didn't do much with his 18 months as Badenoch's right-hand man. Though to be fair to Stride, the media and political commentary have been more interested in Labour's issues and the rise and troubles of Reform.
Tom Tugendhat has now been slotted into Patel's foreign office boots, and isn't likely to deviate from Tory efforts at toadying up to Trump. Meanwhile, Andrew Griffith takes on Stride's old beat. Griffith, who isn't now nor ever likely to be a household name, was one of Johnson's loyal fans and has broken hot wind into Badenoch's sails from the beginning. Politically speaking, he's the usual boring Tory of the Reform-impersonating caste. Business has too much regulation, young people aren't work ready, employees have too many rights, and we need to look to the private sector for our model for government. He was previously Johnson's net zero "champion", and has spent his time in parliament voting against measures to progress it. Like his boss, he believes efforts at dealing with climate change are a barrier to cheaper energy. In other words, in the rare event of his getting noticed by the public at large his promulgation from the dispatch box aren't likely to move the dial in the Tories' favour.
You might expect me to say that, but James Cleverly's resignation to pursue a London mayoral run underlines the confidence he has in Badenoch's strategy taking the party anywhere fast. Nor, going by his pitch to London Tories, is he. Cleverly has decided to attack Sadiq Khan as "anti-car", yet quite justifiably London Labour can point to ULEZ as one of its greatest policy successes. If he wants to play the game of more cars vs kids' health at the next mayoral election, Khan will be more that happy to participate. The other problem Cleverly has is, despite appearing to be relatively normal as far as leading Tories go, that he's as batshit a rightwinger as the rest of them. During the Tory leadership contest and as the summer 2024 riots were underway, he thought that was a great time to boast about his cuts to the number of care workers coming to this country. He also thought Sunak's compulsory national service scheme for young people was good enough, at the time, to front in the television studios. And going from attacking net zero opponents in the Tory leadership contest as "neo-Luddites", less than a year on he was "agreeing" with Badenoch about ditching its commitments.
What do these shufflings, sackings, and place-seekings tell us about the state of the Tories? It's that no lessons have been learned from their defeat, and that Badenoch is not the only Tory convinced the path back to the big time is by proving themselves more solidly right wing than Reform. This is a recipe for more internecine warfare, not producing a programme capable of cohering the shrinking right bloc of voters and winning large chunks of more centrist-leaning support fed up with Labour, and/or those who've found an abode with the Liberal Democrats. Cleverly in London, Badenoch for the country, neither of them have any idea about how the composition of the electorate is changing in ways that leave their kind of politics at a disadvantage. If they ever do come to terms with this transformation, it'll be belatedly - after the Tories have been handed another deserved drubbing.
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