Last night, I watched the 40th-anniversary re-run of Threads. No pre-briefing about how harrowing the nuclear docudrama would be could prepare me. Millions dead. Babies burnt alive. The horror and brutality of an England reduced to a post-apocalyptic mediaeval hellscape. It almost put me off my Rogan Josh.
Yet however miserable I felt watching a woman chomping through her baby’s umbilical cord in the nuclear winter, I took a small and unusual shred of comfort from the fact that I wouldn’t be feeling as grim as James Cleverly, the red-faced Einsteins of his campaign, and my fellow pundits.
Unless Bob Blackman breaks his colleagues’s confidences and publishes how every MP voted on each round, explaining yesterday afternoon will never amount to more than choosing which side’s narrative one prefers. Whatever. For Cleverly to go from first to third, to turn a nailed-on place in the final two into an embarrassing crash out from the race, is remarkable, and a bit funny.
Cleverly’s team will deny an exercise in vote-lending gone wrong. Jenrick’s team will deny that, having boosted Cleverly too much on Tuesday, yesterday saw reality reasserted. Mandy Rice-Davies rules apply. Either way, Grant Shapps’s spreadsheet proficiency has been found wanting. Chateauneuf du Pape.
Politics involves more cock-up than conspiracy. The cliché runs that Tory MPs think of themselves as the most sophisticated electorate in the world. Bless them. What nonsense. Yesterday proved they are not sophisticated, but silly. Too many MPs tried to be too clever by half.
Cleverly’s people went to Jenrick, Jenrick’s people went to Badenoch, and Tugendhat’s people went in all directions. Unexpected initiatives, double-guessing, and misdirected attempts to play 4D Chess combined for a result few of would-be Francis Urguhart’s had intended. So it goes. With an electorate of 120, focusing on anything other than maximising your vote is a fool’s errand.
I still gasped on air on the BBC when the result came through. So did my correspondent colleagues, and the Tory MPs who had delivered it. After two months of surveys, speeches, and speculation, we have ended up with exactly the final two we expected back in July: Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick.
As a Brexiteer fan of Ronald Reagan, Cleverly’s reincarnation as the vessel of the hopes of the party’s self-styled moderate wing, the chosen Tory of people who would never vote Tory – hello Rory! – was bemusing. The remaining two occupy a similar space, however we choose to describe it.
Both Badenoch and Jenrick claim to repudiate the post-New Labour consensus. Both have paid fealty to Keith Joseph; both have read their Stepping Stones; both hope to answer the over-hanging question of why fourteen years of Conservative government failed to make the country more conservative. A choice, not an echo. Apologies if you wanted a quieter life.
The left’s braindead NPCs will write this up as a leap into the dark. They claim Keir Starmer is cheering a freebie so gratifying he’d assume it’s from Lord Alli. They said the same things about Margaret Thatcher. They have no idea that politics has changed since 2002. Yesterday’s men can be ignored.
Both candidates have their distinctive analyses and prescriptions. But both offer more than the affable management of decline. Read Badenoch’s Renewal 2030 pamphlet. Read Jenrick’s migration paper for the Centre for Policy Studies. Read their articles, watch their statements, and compare their abilities on air. Will Jenrick get his debates? Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Naturally, ConservativeHome will have much to say about both candidates in the new few weeks. We welcome, as ever, reader submissions as to their own choice. Badenoch must be considered the frontrunner, based on our polls. But if the last two weeks have proven anything, it is that this race is still wide open, difficult to predict, and prone to upsets. Jenrick is not out of this.
Buckle up for a fascinating run-in to November 2nd. Will it be Badenoch’s? Or Jenrick’? Or whoever steps in if (when?) we do this all again in two years? Who knows. As Gavin Rice has been outlining, the path to victory in 2029 is clear. One of these two can seize it. Which do you prefer?
