2024 Conservative Leadership Election

[Gloster]

Jenrick comes across like a bland version of Badenoch or Braverman (as reactionary and right-wing as them, but less personality) so I'm surprised he's polling more than Badenoch. I've been a bit out of the loop lately: Braverman didn't stand by the looks of things?

Braverman didn’t stand. I presume that the chances are that the next Conservative leader is likely to lead the party to another 2024 and then be challenged: that is not for her. You can’t be really nasty in opposition.

 

[brad465]

Please explain for those of us not on x.

However, I presume that it is related to Truss and her increasingly strange witterings. Personally, I think she has had some sort of breakdown, possibly in her last days as PM, and is living in some sort of dream-world alternative reality.

She basically described what could have happened had the mini-budget been allowed to fester, before blaming the "economic establishment" for ousting her government, with particular scathing of the Bank of England. She then listed several problem aspects of the economy now, claiming they would not be present had she had her way. She found no fault with herself or how she went about business and was essentially one of the biggest displays of arrogance imaginable.

 

[edwin_m]

Jenrick comes across like a bland version of Badenoch or Braverman (as reactionary and right-wing as them, but less personality) so I'm surprised he's polling more than Badenoch.

I think Jenrick is seen as a better media performer, but as you say fairly similar politics.

 

[Gloster]

I think Jenrick is seen as a better media performer, but as you say fairly similar politics.

I am sure that Jenrick will perform particularly well in the media if Richard Desmond decides to go back into newspapers.

 

[edwin_m]

I am sure that Jenrick will perform particularly well in the media if Richard Desmond decides to go back into newspapers.

Well yes, it's an example of double standards how Starmer is being hammered for things that are much less serious than what is alleged of Jenrick.

 

[jfollows]

I still predict Cleverly (https://www.theguardian.com/politic...ior-tories-fear-next-leader-wont-survive-long):

“Tugendhat’s too left for the right, Kemi’s too right for the left. Jenrick is just unexciting and attempting to be something that he isn’t, which leaves Cleverly.”

but we’ll see.
I also think he’s the best choice for the party; any of the others will provoke a cataclysm of sorts.

 

[3141]

I still predict Cleverly (https://www.theguardian.com/politic...ior-tories-fear-next-leader-wont-survive-long):

but we’ll see.
I also think he’s the best choice for the party; any of the others will provoke a cataclysm of sorts.

However, people who write for the Guardian aren't representative of the Conservative Party members who will be voting for their next leader. The members will vote for the candidate they prefer, rather than one who may be the best choice for the party but has less appeal to them.

 

[317 forever]

However, people who write for the Guardian aren't representative of the Conservative Party members who will be voting for their next leader. The members will vote for the candidate they prefer, rather than one who may be the best choice for the party but has less appeal to them.

Particularly as, for the Tories and Labour alike, there has been a tendency to treat early leadership contests following a loss of office as beauty contests (in terms of their political standing) rather than an opportunity to seek quick re-electability with floating or disillusioned voters.

 

[Donny Dave]

Has Kemi Badenoch just damaged her hopes of being elected the new leader?

In an interview with The Radio Times, she has said that maternity pay has gone too far, and needs to be cut back, with less regulatory burdens for businesses and the HMRC.

Maternity pay has gone too far, says Kemi Badenoch

The Tory leadership candidate says the government should be reducing regulatory burdens for businesses.

www.bbc.co.uk

Tory leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch has said maternity pay has "gone too far" and the government needed to interfere less in peoples' lives.

Speaking to Times Radio, Badenoch said statutory maternity pay, set up to support mothers for 39 weeks after having a baby, is a "function of tax", calling it "excessive".

The shadow business secretary did not say what she thought the right level of maternity pay should be, but said the government should be reducing regulatory burdens.

She said: “We need to have more personal responsibility - there was a time when there wasn’t any maternity pay and people were having more babies."

Badenoch later said that she "of course" believes in maternity pay.

 

[brad465]

Has Kemi Badenoch just damaged her hopes of being elected the new leader?

In an interview with The Radio Times, she has said that maternity pay has gone too far, and needs to be cut back, with less regulatory burdens for businesses and the HMRC.

Maternity pay has gone too far, says Kemi Badenoch

The Tory leadership candidate says the government should be reducing regulatory burdens for businesses.

www.bbc.co.uk

Depends what the overall party membership and Tory MPs think of it. If they are broadly supportive of what she's said here, she won't have damaged her leadership hopes.

However, becoming party leader is one thing, getting elected to government is another entirely. If this sort of stance is a big vote loser, then even if she's not damaged her leadership hopes it would damage the chances of re-election to power.

 

[TheGuy77]

The conference is live now.

 

[Acfb]

Depends what the overall party membership and Tory MPs think of it. If they are broadly supportive of what she's said here, she won't have damaged her leadership hopes.

However, becoming party leader is one thing, getting elected to government is another entirely. If this sort of stance is a big vote loser, then even if she's not damaged her leadership hopes it would damage the chances of re-election to power.

I don't really understand the minds of the remaining Conservative MPs so it's hard to know why they're supporting the various candidates. I have an aquaintance who knows Alex Burghart who's supporting Badenoch but he wasn't sure why he was supporting Badenoch. From a voter perspective the one candidate I really dont understand the appeal of is Jenrick to anybody but I suppose he's so cynical and calculating, he doesn't shoot from the hip like Badenoch is doing, at least.

It's all kind of moot anyway I think. The next election is not technically unwinnable for the Conservatives but I think the best case scenario is probably just denying Labour a majority because I don't think most of the Lib Dem seats are winnable for the Tories.

 

[nw1]

Has Kemi Badenoch just damaged her hopes of being elected the new leader?

In an interview with The Radio Times, she has said that maternity pay has gone too far, and needs to be cut back, with less regulatory burdens for businesses and the HMRC.

Maternity pay has gone too far, says Kemi Badenoch

The Tory leadership candidate says the government should be reducing regulatory burdens for businesses.

www.bbc.co.uk

Oh dear, the old "take money away from ordinary people to line the pockets of big business" stance.
Will certainly not be popular now, if it ever was.

Kemi Badenoch: Margaret Thatcher 3.0 ? Perhaps she will be even less successful than Maggie 2.0 was, exactly two years ago.

 

[SuspectUsual]

Has Kemi Badenoch just damaged her hopes of being elected the new leader?

In an interview with The Radio Times, she has said that maternity pay has gone too far, and needs to be cut back, with less regulatory burdens for businesses and the HMRC.

Maternity pay has gone too far, says Kemi Badenoch

The Tory leadership candidate says the government should be reducing regulatory burdens for businesses.

www.bbc.co.uk

She’s all for “personal responsibility” and has her tame media friends pointing out she resigned her job at the Spectator when she got pregnant as it wasn’t fair to burden a small company with her maternity leave costs

In totally unrelated news, her husband is a millionaire banker

 

[nw1]

I don't really understand the minds of the remaining Conservative MPs so it's hard to know why they're supporting the various candidates. I have an aquaintance who knows Alex Burghart who's supporting Badenoch but he wasn't sure why he was supporting Badenoch. From a voter perspective the one candidate I really dont understand the appeal of is Jenrick to anybody but I suppose he's so cynical and calculating, he doesn't shoot from the hip like Badenoch is doing, at least.

It's all kind of moot anyway I think. The next election is not technically unwinnable for the Conservatives but I think the best case scenario is probably just denying Labour a majority because I don't think most of the Lib Dem seats are winnable for the Tories.

Indeed, I can see a number of the narrow Lab gains flipping back to the Tories but the likes of Badenoch or Jenrick are not going to return the Lib Dem blue wall to the Tories. Many of those majorities are five-figure, even some seats which the Lib Dems have never won before. Even Cleverly's a little right-wing IMO. Someone like Hunt could have made some inroads, I guess.

Who knows, maybe the next election will see Labour, the Tories, the Lib Dems and (shudder) Reform getting almost equal shares of the vote. The two smaller parties will be less tainted by government and could easily see increased vote share.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 29 Sep 2024 ==

She’s all for “personal responsibility” and has her tame media friends pointing out she resigned her job at the Spectator when she got pregnant as it wasn’t fair to burden a small company with her maternity leave costs

In totally unrelated news, her husband is a millionaire banker

Saint Kemi the Virtue Signaller. And that's what her lot normally accuse the left of!

 

[brad465]

Next up in the "who is the most blindly arrogant" contest, Truss, who lost her own seat, claims she would have done better than Sunak in the election:

I'd have done better than Sunak in election, says Liz Truss

The former PM tells a packed hall what she thinks of her Tory predecessors and the MPs vying to be the next leader.

www.bbc.co.uk

Liz Truss has said she would have done better than Rishi Sunak at the general election if she had still been Conservative leader.
Truss was forced to stand down as prime minister in 2022, after just 45 days when her "mini budget" triggered a market meltdown.
Asked at a Tory conference event if she would have done better than Sunak, who led the party to the biggest election defeat in its history in July, she said: "Yes I do."
But she went on to say that it would still have been a "tall order" to win, adding that the party "should have kept Boris".
"If the mini-budget had been allowed to succeed” then voters would have looked more kindly on the Conservatives, she argued, but it was "difficult" to get the changes she wanted through without the support of Tory MPs.
The former prime minister said she would not endorse any of the four contenders vying for the Tory leadership - Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly.
“So far I haven’t seen any of the candidates really acknowledge how bad things are in the country as a whole and frankly for the Conservative Party.
"I think there’s a bit of Panglossian [thinking that] all we need to do is unite, all we need to do is show competence and we’ll be ushered back into office”.
She urged candidates to think more radically about policies like expanding fracking and coal power, and abolishing the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act, arguing that Britain was now a "socialist country", thanks in part to previous Conservative governments.
The packed auditorium listened largely in silence, but broke into applause and cheering when Truss said a Donald Trump victory in the US elections "would really cheer me up".
She was quizzed by The Telegraph's Tim Stanley about how she managed to keep going in the face of rejection by voters, attacks from critics and ridicule by comedians.
She denied lacking a sense of humour, but said jokes about her from "left wing" comics were "just not funny" as they were "in power" as part of the liberal establishment she was fighting against.
Explaining that she was on a mission to save "not just Britain but Western civilization", she added: "I enjoy the fight."
Did she ever feel like throwing the towel in and doing whatever makes her happy? she was asked.
"This is what I do to be happy," she told the crowd.

 

[nw1]

Next up in the "who is the most blindly arrogant" contest, Truss, who lost her own seat, claims she would have done better than Sunak in the election:

I'd have done better than Sunak in election, says Liz Truss

The former PM tells a packed hall what she thinks of her Tory predecessors and the MPs vying to be the next leader.

www.bbc.co.uk

I also see, from the same article:

The packed auditorium listened largely in silence, but broke into applause and cheering when Truss said a Donald Trump victory in the US elections "would really cheer me up".

So the 2024 Conservative Party evidently has a good numnber of the kind of unhinged foaming-at-the-mouth types that would appreciate a Trump victory.
The likes of Clarke, Heseltine and Major must be pulling their hair out at how their party has evidently become a haven for alt-right flat-earthers. Is there really much difference between the grassroots membership of the 2024 Tory Party and that of Reform?

The party needs to split, all the Trumpists and Trussists need to go off and join Reform where they belong, leaving the rest to become a moderate centre-right party of the type seen in the Major years.

 

[edwin_m]

I also see, from the same article:



So the 2024 Conservative Party evidently has a good numnber of the kind of unhinged foaming-at-the-mouth types that would appreciate a Trump victory.
The likes of Clarke, Heseltine and Major must be pulling their hair out at how their party has evidently become a haven for alt-right flat-earthers. Is there really much difference between the grassroots membership of the 2024 Tory Party and that of Reform?

The party needs to split, all the Trumpists and Trussists need to go off and join Reform where they belong, leaving the rest to become a moderate centre-right party of the type seen in the Major years.

To be fair it's a bit of a self-selecting group. Those that would voluntarily go to listen to Truss are likely to share quite a few of her views.

 

[43096]

To be fair it's a bit of a self-selecting group. Those that would voluntarily go to listen to Truss are likely to share quite a few of her views.

It's a shame some from the centre right side didn't go and tell her what a complete loser she is - at least Sunak could win his own constituency.

 

[Gloster]

It's a shame some from the centre right side didn't go and tell her what a complete loser she is - at least Sunak could win his own constituency.

Long may she continue to witter idiotically. As long as she does everybody will be reminded why they didn’t vote Conservative in the last election. The Conservative party needs to shut her up, but I think that she is so deluded that that is an almost impossible task. I repeat my opinion that she has had some form of breakdown, possibly in her last days in No. 10.

 

[nr758123]

It's a shame some from the centre right side didn't go and tell her what a complete loser she is - at least Sunak could win his own constituency.

It’s amazing how many former Tory MPs have yet to come to terms with their new-found irrelevance.

 

[43096]

It’s amazing how many former Tory MPs have yet to come to terms with their new-found irrelevance.

It’s not just the MPs, but the wider membership. Just heard one member wittering on about how they now need to competently deliver their policies. Obviously oblivious to the fact that in opposition you don’t deliver any policies!

 

[jfollows]

A summary I paraphrase and generally agree with:

1. Tugendhat - not good enough
2. Cleverly - status quo & safe choice
3. Jenrick - Telegraph readers
4. Badenoch - too extreme

I don’t personally want Badenoch to win because I don’t like her and don’t like hearing her. Given that the membership figures highly as Telegraph readers I think it’s between the middle ones, unless the MPs cause an upset and select different ones.

 

[SuspectUsual]

Tugendhat is, I think, the least bad option of the four. Cleverly is the opposite of his name, and his faux gravitas really grates. Jenrick is flapping in the wind, pandering to whatever he thinks will get him elected. And Badenoch is scary.

Jenrick should have been hurt by the opaque answers around his campaign funding and the ridiculous claims about the armed forces yesterday; Badenoch should have been holed below the waterline by the awful comments yesterday about carers, and the earlier nonsense about maternity leave

If I was a Tory (ha!) I'd actually think that Tugendhat would make a good choice given their position coming off the back of a real drubbing at the polls. Pretty sensible, not too extreme in his views, the grown up in the room. Let him do it for a couple of years whilst the dust settles, and then the eminences grises can have a quiet word and he can be gently moved aside in favour of whoever they want to fight the next election

But this is the Tories, so that won't happen

 

[nw1]

Tugendhat is, I think, the least bad option of the four. Cleverly is the opposite of his name, and his faux gravitas really grates. Jenrick is flapping in the wind, pandering to whatever he thinks will get him elected. And Badenoch is scary.

Jenrick should have been hurt by the opaque answers around his campaign funding and the ridiculous claims about the armed forces yesterday; Badenoch should have been holed below the waterline by the awful comments yesterday about carers, and the earlier nonsense about maternity leave

If I was a Tory (ha!) I'd actually think that Tugendhat would make a good choice given their position coming off the back of a real drubbing at the polls. Pretty sensible, not too extreme in his views, the grown up in the room. Let him do it for a couple of years whilst the dust settles, and then the eminences grises can have a quiet word and he can be gently moved aside in favour of whoever they want to fight the next election

But this is the Tories, so that won't happen

Badenoch and Jenrick have had plenty said about them already, but there's something about Cleverly that really winds me up. I think it's because he comes across to me incredibly condescending and patronising. I remember some argument he had with David Lammy around five years ago, and there was something in his manner I didn't like, and nothing has happened since to change that.

But he's not silly-right, which makes me think he might win. Right-wing enough for the Tory membership, but not a foaming-at-the-mouth extremist.

I'd agree that Tugendhat "should" win as the most moderate of all of them.

 

[AlterEgo]

I'd agree that Tugendhat "should" win as the most moderate of all of them.

That’s not saying much. He’s also totally bonkers.

 

[brad465]

Does anyone really believe this was a mistake:

Laura Kuenssberg 'embarrassed' by Boris Johnson email error

The presenter's scheduled interview with Johnson was pulled after she accidentally sent him her notes.

www.bbc.co.uk

BBC presenter Laura Kuenssberg's scheduled interview with Boris Johnson has been cancelled, after she accidentally sent the former prime minister her briefing notes.
Boris Johnson: The Laura Kuenssberg Interview was due to be broadcast on Thursday evening on BBC One.
However, the BBC's former political editor said, external it was "not right for the interview to go ahead" after sharing notes with him which had been intended for her colleagues.
Kuenssberg described it as "embarrassing and disappointing", but said "red faces aside, honesty is the best policy".
The BBC said it had agreed with Johnson's team that cancelling the interview was "the best way forward".
Johnson is currently taking part in media interviews to promote his new memoir, which has also been recently serialised in a newspaper.

Presenters usually work with a team of researchers to prepare a brief ahead of a major interview.
The process usually includes gathering biographical material about the subject, highlighting controversies, and coming up with suggested lines of questioning.
In a statement posted on X late on Wednesday, Kuenssberg explained: "While prepping to interview Boris Johnson tomorrow, by mistake I sent our briefing notes to him in a message meant for my team.
"That obviously means it’s not right for the interview to go ahead."
She continued: "It’s very frustrating, and there’s no point pretending it’s anything other than embarrassing and disappointing, as there are plenty of important questions to be asked.
"But red faces aside, honesty is the best policy. See you on Sunday," she added, referring to her regular Sunday morning politics programme which will go ahead as normal.
In a statement, the BBC said:, external "[Thursday's] interview with Boris Johnson won’t be going ahead.
"As Laura has explained, interview briefing notes meant for colleagues were inadvertently shared with him. This makes an interview tomorrow untenable.
"Under the circumstances, both the BBC and Mr Johnson’s team have agreed this is the best way forward."
Kuenssberg had said on her programme at the weekend that her interview with Johnson would be his "first on his time in office since his dramatic departure from Downing Street".
The BBC said it had moved EastEnders back to its usual slot of 19:30 BST in Thursday's schedule in place of the interview.
Johnson is still due to be interviewed by another BBC journalist, Matt Chorley, on 5 Live on Tuesday.

 

[takno]

Does anyone really believe this was a mistake:

Laura Kuenssberg 'embarrassed' by Boris Johnson email error

The presenter's scheduled interview with Johnson was pulled after she accidentally sent him her notes.

www.bbc.co.uk

Any particular reason to believe it wasn't?

 

[jfollows]

I felt the whole conference, egged on by the leadership candidates, was a fest of delusion. “We’ll win the next election because Kier Starmer accepted some designer glasses.” No you won’t. Whoever wins the leadership contest will be the caretaker, to be replaced in due course by someone who realises that they’re supposed to need to appeal to schoolteachers in Nuneaton rather than Reform supporters, and that in five years a good number of these won’t be able to vote because they’ll be dead.
Anyway, it just amuses me to see these fools making such a mess. Eventually it will be good to have a competent opposition party, but until then the LibDems will step into the role.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Oct 2024 ==

Does anyone really believe this was a mistake:

Laura Kuenssberg 'embarrassed' by Boris Johnson email error

The presenter's scheduled interview with Johnson was pulled after she accidentally sent him her notes.

www.bbc.co.uk

I do.
Simply because if it wasn’t, the truth will come out and her career would be over.

 

[SuspectUsual]

Have the four contenders got a schedule for their attempts to make themselves look stupid and unelectable?

Today it seems to be Cleverley’s turn, as he’s tweeted about how Labour are “unpatriotic” ceding the Chagos Islands…..only to be fact checked by about a thousand people who’ve pointed out it was him who started the negotiations in 2022 and him who said he’d hoped they’d be finished in 2023

(Link to tweet below)

x.com

x.com