…And then there were four.
Mel Stride MP was knocked out of the leadership contest on the second ballot.
We all know there’s a vacancy at the top of the Conservative and Unionist Party and so far, the story, and current shortlist, is sticking close to our ConservativeHome survey results.
Stride followed Priti Patel out of the race, and as 119 Conservative MPs again voted in secret, there is the usual media speculation, around who voted differently in rounds one and two, and how that might change after the cavalcade of Conference, in Birmingham.
A quirk of the next stage is – it takes place on stage.
All of this is important, of course, and that’s why we at ConservativeHome cover it. However, I’d like to draw your focus away from the search for ‘the One’ just for the moment.
I interviewed the six original contenders for ConservativeHome, and asked if they agreed that: as much as it is important who the next leader is, it’s also important, what the five losing candidates do next?
They all said they would fully support the winner.
That’s good to hear, and will be better to see, come the time. The Party cannot afford for the disappointed to walk away, or mothball campaigns, just to revive them again in 18 months. Everybody knows how damaging that has been. Besides, the parliamentary party is just too small to ignore the talents that of those who entered this race.
So, in November, whilst a new leader builds their team there will an understandable focus on who is in their shadow cabinet.
I have a suspicion the Westminster-bubble-breathers and the political Twitterati will be distracted by who gets to shadow “the great offices of state” and ignore the one job that could, at this point, be more important than them all:
The Chairman of the Party.
Here’s why:
The role itself was created in the wake of an election defeat and every candidate in this race has argued firmly and consistently that the Party’s structures and procedures need to change.
If CCHQ isn’t now fully expecting a massive overhaul, it hasn’t been listening to the contest it is helping to oversee, besides, the chill wind of change blowing from the Party’s bank balance has already been the herald of things to come.
Who the new leader picks as Chairman, and what tools they give them to do the job, will be crucial to the Party’s, and their own, success.
The failure has been a slow and insidious perception that has evolved that – the role and CCHQ are just not where your movers-and-shakers end up.
Back in 2009 I knew many of the foot soldiers of CCHQ. They were smart and dedicated. You could tell, when you met them, they believed they could, and would, win. When David Cameron entered Downing Street, albeit with the help of the Lib-Dems, many of those bright ambitious foot soldiers went, where they’d hoped to, into Whitehall, into No 10, into Government.
It wasn’t their fault, it’s what they wanted (and mostly deserved) but almost imperceptibly, a slow hollowing out of CCHQ began. It lasted fourteen years. Staff arrived of course but hoped for promotion out. Yes, there was that winning revival in 2019, where some old faces even returned to Matthew Parker Street – not many stayed.
Simultaneously we have seen some people in the Chairman role who one strongly suspected really didn’t, deep down, want to be there.
That just can’t happen now.
I’ve only known of a very few Chairmen who genuinely hankered after the role, but they do exist – so let’s hope the next leader choses one of them. Someone who really wants it.
It matters, because in the rubble of where the party stands after the last election there are valid arguments being made, in some quarters, that CCHQ should not exist at all – its functions carried out elsewhere than Westminster and outsourced.
I know I risk upsetting some good people who work, or have worked, in CCHQ. Many are former colleagues, but I know they are smart enough to accept that the current clamour for change will not go away and it might not be pretty.
There will be few “spoonfuls of sugar to help the medicine go down” and a new Chairman’s to-do-list could be so challenging -it won’t help if those ‘dos’ are continually met by an unhelpful chorus of ‘don’ts’. The party doesn’t have the luxury of choice.
Remember:
Every leadership contender says the membership needs more of a role and needs to be listened to. At the risk of getting overly twee, I think members would also like to feel a bit more love. After all they expend enough of it on the party’s behalf.
Every leadership contender has said the candidates process needs overhauling. ConservativeHome will be focussing on this issue soon because I don’t remember ever hearing the level of unhappiness over the process in recent years that I am now.
Every leadership contender has heard and echoed the frustration and anger over the behaviour of some MPs in the last Parliament.
Every leadership contender has spotted the yawning gap in support for the party that is the younger generation and wants to get them back. If the likes of me – in my early fifties, grey haired and a little creaky in the knees – is accurately described as a younger member then, as the film script goes – “Houston. We have a problem”.
It is just those problems, and how to solve them, that will fill the in-tray of a new Chairman in November – but if the person being considered has the ambition, clout and character to rebuild and transform the party machine from a rusty hulk to a racing car – then I have advice:
Give them the job.
The whole job, mind. No more public-relations-only roles, while others, that share the title, follow their own path, out of sight, with the donors and the wizards of spin and gurus of polling. That crowd do incredible things, but they should deal with a Chairman with the presence and powers to do all the things that need to be done – not just the front-of-house.
You see, I’m old enough to remember when the Chairman of the Party was a big-beast and so regular on the airwaves as chief defender or attack-dog, you marvelled at their stamina.
The days when the leader was the undoubted star, but you felt the Chairman had the authority and position of the theatre manager:
Always there but never hogging the limelight – always making sure the house was full, the star supported, the show was advertised, the story celebrated and defended, and the large support cast knew the rules and didn’t privately break them without consequences.
If all the final four leadership contenders has someone like that in mind – then the Party stands a chance.
