The Conservative Party leadership vote…

C4 news interviewed a a few conservative members who seemed very happy with the result, shame they’ll most likely be 6ft under by the time the next election will be held.

I reckon my bet on Honest Bob is definitely going to pay out

Generic is likewise my prediction as above with fly tipped sofa knocking on the door in due course.

I now need to work on my explanation of how I really actually got it right when Bad Enoch walks it. Agree she’s more of a threat given creating your own reality seem to be what works for the right these days.

Badenoch who is now the firm favourite, will cause Labour the biggest headaches of any of the candidates.

I think she’ll cause the biggest headaches for the conservatives, she could start a brawl in a nunnery, she has an impressive ability to wind up both friends and enemies, Cleverly was a far bigger threat

Not sure why people think this is a good result for Labour, Badenoch who is now the firm favourite, will cause Labour the biggest headaches of any of the candidates

Why? She’s rat poison to most people with no redeeming qualities.

Badenoch is going too be epic to watch. I remember some people saying that after a projected election defeat the Tories would move back towards the centre which seemed unlikely to me. It’s fair to say I was right, they are still going to try to out Reform, Reform.

She is going to remind everyone, whenever needed, why it was so important to remove the Tories.

I am not so sure Starmer will be able to deal with her throwing curveballs, he seams to struggle when it goes off script. It is hard to break down someone’s logic when it is actually just illogical bullshit. I am the same even on subjects that I am confident in if someone starts arguing with just nonsense it is much harder to make a case back than when an actual logical argument is made.

There have been a few incidents where Starmer has been blindsided by an interview question (or kids protesting climate change) and he just doesn’t have a **** clue what to do.

In fact if Badenoch does win, I would engineer it so the first couple of times its prime question time Raynor faces her, I reckon Raynor would give her a right kicking across the despatch box.

C4 news interviewed a a few conservative members who seemed very happy with the result,

Whereas Five Live had a focus group of Tory voters who listened to all 4 make their pitches last week. Tom Tugenhat was by far the most popular, with Cleverly second. The two Faragist nutjobs went down like a cup of cold sick

And that was a panel of specifically Tory voters, not the wider electorate

The Tory Membership are now finally going to get what they’ve craved…  a nasty, reactionary, far right headbanger at the helm. And they’ll be as overjoyed as the Labour left were when they finally got their lefty messiah installed to usher in a new dawn

The repellent effect on most voters will be much the same

The Tory Party is about to have its Corbyn moment. The political wilderness beckons. It’s going to be fun to watch

“It’s the biggest gift we could have given the Labour Party

“They will be rejoicing.”

Former Chairwoman of the Conservative Party Baroness Sayeeda Warsi on Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch making the final two. pic.twitter.com/SjoQf4nYX9

— PoliticsJOE (@PoliticsJOE_UK) October 9, 2024

The two Faragist nutjobs went down like a cup of cold sick. And that was a panel of specifically Tory voters, not the wider electorate

The Tory Membership are now finally going to get what they’ve craved… a nasty, reactionary, far right headbanger at the helm.

Did you just not totally contract yourself in consecutive sentences?

I agree with the Corbyn moment comment though.

Tory voters and Tory membership can be separate groups.

I was highlighting the difference between the Tory membership who want Badanoch or Honest Bob and the less unhinged, far less extreme common-or-garden Tory voter, who overwhelmingly favoured Tugenhat and Cleverly

The Tory voters in the focus group clearly thought the party should be aiming for the centre ground, whereas the party membership want to stampede off in the direction or Reform

The latter have got their way, but there’s only a few thousand of them and most will be dead by the next election anyway

Ah, fair enough. My comprehension error.

“I reckon my bet on Honest Bob is definitely going to pay out. The chinless, corrupt, morality-free, right wing, privately educated, Oxbridge, middle-aged white guy was always a shoe in”

Like your 9/1 bet on Braverman eh binners???

I don’t think it realy matters… any newbie is just a place holder until the next election.

Playing devils advocate, If I were a tory leader wannabe, I’d be weighing up taking the center ground from labour, or trying to out-facist UKIP/Reform or whatever incarnation they are in a few years.

They can’t do both…

…well they can, but then they can join the Lib dems on the same seats as ‘what do we even mean any more?’

Such is the binary bullshit of UK politics.

James Cleverly “we need to be more normal”

Tory MP’s “hold my beer”

Like your 9/1 bet on Braverman eh binners???

I cashed that at 12 months ago and put it on Honest Bob instead.

Cruella definitely overreached and buggered it up for herself with the MPs. Otherwise the final two would have been her and Badanoch for certain and she’d have won  The membership all absolutely adore her.

But when she did so, her opportunistic understudy/sock puppet just took up where she left off. They’re one of the same, her and Honest Bob.

Be under no illusions about who’ll really be pulling the strings

They have him by the balls’: senior Tories warn Robert Jenrick will be at mercy of ‘Braverman right’ as leader

Guessing the Lib Dems will do even better next time as all the tories I know hate the likes of Badenoch and her BS and won’t be attracted by it. They may get some reform votes back but would probably lose just as many to Lib Dem.
Any moderate tory voters who may have switched to Labour are probably already regretting it and looking for somewhere to go and that is not going to be Jenrick/Badenoch Conservative Party and not Reform.

I now need to work on my explanation of how I really actually got it right when Bad Enoch walks it. Agree she’s more of a threat given creating your own reality seem to be what works for the right these days.

Trouble is they have the papers and are quite happy to rewrite history.
It’ll be Prime Minister Farage before you know it.

They will out reform reform by nicking Reforms main asset.

Unfortunately we have to rely on the Tory party members and reach of the papers dying off and people understanding what the ECHR is about and sort of not happily throwing their/our human rights away just to keep some ‘furriners’ out.

Any moderate tory voters who may have switched to Labour are probably already regretting it and looking for somewhere to go and that is not going to be Jenrick/Badenoch Conservative Party and not Reform

Pretty much what Martin Kettle is saying in the Guardian today

The new Tory leader will be Badenoch or Jenrick. Either would be a one-way ticket to another political planet

“The real winner today was neither Badenoch nor Jenrick. Yes, they will now fight for the job that Rishi Sunak is so keen to relinquish. But the happiest person in British politics today is surely the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey. His ambitious dream of capturing even more Conservative seats than his party did in July is suddenly looking much more realistic.”

On a side note of throwing your rights out, heard some people on a Spanish non lucrative visa without an income but cash are having to show around €80k in the bank account for their second year renewal.

In the first year they had to show €40k and for the second it’s a double up for some odd reason.

Jenrick is not a conviction politician like Badenoch. He is a slippery chancer only interested in gaining power. He will tack to the centre quite quickly if he wins because most of the remaining Tory MPs understand that’s where you win from – that’s why Cleverly was their clear favourite till they screwed up the voting. He only needs to keep the MPs on side once he’s elected leader, they’re the only ones who can remove him, not the members. See Starmer for details.

Will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next year or two. One of the issues the Tories have had over recent years is the amount of influence the right of the party has had, so that more centrist/electable leaders have ended up compromised after having to pander to the right. Now that they’re going to be electing someone from the right of the party, will we see the centre of the party being able to have as much influence (in which case they’ll be electing a new leader before the next GE) or will the right dominate and take the Tories further right (possibly absorbing the Reform Party in the process)? I’m hoping for the latter but that the British public is still sane enough that the Tories get eviscerated again at the next GE…

Not sure why people think this is a good result for Labour, Badenoch who is now the firm favourite, will cause Labour the biggest headaches of any of the candidates.

You obviously see something in her I can’t…, what is it exactly that you think she’ll be good at as the Leader of the Opposition?

He will tack to the centre quite quickly if he wins

Its worth reading that Guardian article I posted above. He’s already on warning and he’s not even been elected yet. The nutters are not convinced of his conversion to their cause under Cruella and are already issuing threats of (another!) leadership election to depose him if he tacks to the centre

Theyre all absolutely mental! Threatening the next leadership election when they’ve not even finished this one? Completely nuts!

Labour and the Lib Dems must all be loving every single minute of this madness

They’re saying that this was a ‘clever’ exercise in lending votes that then went horribly wrong to deliver the wrong outcome

Given their time in government, that’s a quite fitting start to their time in opposition

A complete farce!

So, the choice is down to a man who thinks it’s a good idea to paint over Disney characters becasue they’re too ‘welcoming’ and a woman who thinks mat. pay is excessive?

No wonder they’re down to 120 MPs.

Its worth reading that Guardian article I posted above. He’s already on warning and he’s not even been elected yet. The nutters are not convinced of his conversion to their cause under Cruella and are already issuing threats of (another!) leadership election to depose him if he tacks to the centre

Yeah this. I read it last night and I’d broadly agree with what he’s saying. Uggh.

On my evening commentariat round up I haven’t found anyone of the usual suspects saying this is bad for labour per se. Sure, I’d agree it might drag the discourse to the right, and there’s clearly an discussion about the labour position already.

But I think you have to consider the quality of the candidates too. Badenoch is very poor, has weak and frankly ridiculous positions that she is unable to justify, and when she attempts to, she gets angry and patronizes the interviewer. Jenrick? Oh come on.

The choice is between someone the mps don’t trust, and someone else who gets angry and nobody likes

The nutters are not convinced of his conversion to their cause

plus now, only 19 letters of no confidence are needed, so that’s quite a tightrope to navigate.

19 Letters are all that’s required? Bloody hell! With the track record of this lot we can surely expect at least 3 Tory leadership elections before the next general election, possibly 7 or 8

I see the man-frog has come out and stated the bleedin’ obvious. Clearly a message they don’t want to hear, but he’s right

https://Twitter.com/politlcsuk/status/1843678922124517777?s=46&t=1lK7Dw1b6RqGJyvufO-trQ

Yes the 19 letters thing is a weak point in my reasoning. I wonder if that low threshold will prompt a rule change in the name of stability and recent past experiences.

The Malevolent Penfold Marc Francois and his chums love a leadership crisis nearly as much as Labour loves to brief against itself.

No agenda can “defeat” Reform, or whatever they’ll be called next.

Of course there is. People considering voting reform will do so on the simple assessment of whether they can get a GP appointment, not have to wait months for hospital treatment, if their kids can go to the local school, and afford the weekly shop and be able to pay their rent/mortgage. If they can do all those things by the time the next election comes around and be reassured that govt acts in their interests, they will forget all the stuff about immigrants and will be much less likely to vote for Farage. If the govt carries on telling them these things aren’t possible though or attempts to make excuses, Farage is nailed on to be in govt in some form (perhaps as PM) next time around.

they will forget all the stuff about immigrants

Some will. But there will always be a base ready for that stuff, and always the media and social media companies ready to deliver it.

Hoping for a Reform – Conservative merger of any sort is nihilistic in the extreme, do we really want the Conservatives to turn into The Front Nationale? Those Labour supporters licking their lips at such a prospect should be careful what they wish for.

What Badenoch has in her favour is consistency, something both her admirers and detractors can agree on. The result isn’t even in yet already the conversation, from both the left and the right is how Jenrick will flip-flop at the first opportunity.

I don’t know about you but I’d rather the far right stay in the margins of British politics. Badenoch will divide a Reform Party that like a wolf in a dog’s costume have preyed upon voter disaffection based (amongst other things) on what they see as a lack of consistency from the political classes.

It might be good for the political health of the country if a clearer offer were made to them:

Labour=Left Wing.:

Conservatives = Right Wing:

Reform = Far right.

Greens = Far left

(Apologies to the Scots and Northern Irish, whose voting patterns follow a more complcated route)

From Farages attack on Jenrick, Id say he’s more worried about him than Badenoch

Ive no doubt that Jenrick will flip flop all over the place, but adaptability rather than inflexibility isnt a bad thing in politics

Hoping for a Reform – Conservative merger of any sort is nihilistic in the extreme

Don’t understand it either. If they merge (or more likely agree a non-aggression pact) they could win the next election, probably with Farage as leader. I know Ed Davey has fantasies of the libdems becoming the official opposition, but they’re just that, a fantasy. It’s much more likely that the labour and libdem vote will be split and the combined tory and reform vote will be larger, putting them in govt.

Yep, I don’t want to see a Reform/ Tory merger. Too dangerous. Id sooner they both exist* and split the far right vote.

* Even better, they if they didn’t exist at all obvs.

I think you’re massively underestimating the animosity between Farage, Tice and the rest of the Reform mob and their contempt for the present Tories. They’ve never forgiven them for what they consider to be Borises Betrayal over Brexit and consider them to be a bunch of (relative) socialists.

A merger, or any electoral pact, will simply never  happen. Once bitten and all that

Thats not to say that Farage wouldn’t want to see himself as the next (or one after) Tory party leader, whereupon Reform would collapse like UKIP before it

If that does happen, then that would finally split the Tory party as the right wingers would welcome him like Richard Burgon welcomed Corbyn, while anyone sane left in the Tory Party (are any left?) would be off

 they could win the next election

I think equally likely is that Reform will pull itself apart. There’s any numbers of folks from any of his previous vehicles/parties that have been discarded in the wake of Farage’s narcissistic megalomania, will tell you that as far as he’s concerned he IS the show, and will not tolerate any form of individualism, or treading on his ground, or sharing his spotlight.  Any party with him, Tice and associated hangers on in it is probably hours away every single week from being explosively destroyed like the morning after a “10 pints and a curry” night out.

I think you’re massively underestimating the animosity between Farage

Possibly. But the prospect of acquiring power has enormous potential to resolve disagreements and personal grudges. We know from history that the tories are experts at adapting and reacting to the political landscape to win power. They’ve done it time and again and will this time. They’ll dangle some irresistable temptations in front of Farage and Tice and they won’t be able to resist.

while anyone sane left in the Tory Party (are any left?) would be off

I’m not sure there are many moderates left in the tory party after Johnson’s purges. The assumption that centrists will leave the party split and marginalised is probably overegged.