Find arguments and water roses

The battle for the next presidency of the Conservative Party, following their crushing election defeat, promises to be a thrilling contest.

Since the momentous Brexit vote in June 2016, the once-disciplined Conservatives have spent at least as much time on party conflict as they do on running the world’s sixth-largest economy. Liberal Tory internationalists, right-wing Law & Order cronies, radical nationalists – the party has splintered into factions and factions that have simply called themselves research departments, or even mafia families. The warring camps gleefully fight each other, eagerly encouraged by a media that turns every anonymous joke into news.

The new leader of the 1922 Club, which includes all Conservative MPs, thinks it’s over. They’ve been significantly reduced in numbers since the general election in early July, with just 23.7 per cent willing to vote for the world’s oldest party; their 121 seats in the House of Commons are less than a third of the number they won in 2019 under Boris Johnson. In 1922, boss Bob Blackman wanted to discipline this more manageable group with yellow cards: anyone caught behaving badly towards people in their own ranks would have to be publicly denounced.

The criminal hunt will keep Blackman, 66, busy for a while, but he has plenty to worry about on other fronts. Blackman is familiar with the list of two women and four men running to succeed Sunak. After protests in local party groups over the summer, interviews in the parliamentary group and speeches at the party conference in Birmingham, two of the party’s nearly 150,000 paying members are going to the primaries. The new leader is expected to be elected in early November.

The process, which will last more than three months, is certainly about the content. For example, three former party leaders recently called on the new leaders not to water down Britain’s ambitious climate targets. The trio will have a tough time with current frontrunner Kemi Badenoch: the former Minister of Economy and Business wants to delay the decarbonisation of the British economy until after the current 2050 threshold. The other right-wing party in the race, former Home Secretary Priti Patel, recently even called for a complete pause in climate policy.

The third right-wing candidate in the race, former Foreign Secretary Robert Jenrick, is banking on his reputation as a tough guy on asylum. He has been promoting himself for months but has stuck by Sunak during the election campaign, and many in the nationalist camp who previously supported Suella Braverman have defected to him. She retired from the race in a column in the Conservative Telegraph newspaper: Because she is always being talked about badly, she doesn’t want to lead the party. In reality, the twice-sacked minister had no chance, having repeatedly criticized Sunak during the election campaign. This is seen as unforgivable, even among Tories accustomed to trench warfare.

In Britain’s majority voting system, elections are won in the middle. Liberal Conservatives Tom Stimmehat and Melvyn Stride are recalling this iron law, asking for votes from the moderates in the parliamentary group. Former Foreign and Home Secretary James Cleverly, the third immigrant child in the race and, as a reserve lieutenant colonel, the party’s favourite, is also a peacemaker in the middle.

But will Blackman’s calls for honesty and the threat of yellow cards bear fruit? Anyone who has studied the British newspapers recently might doubt it. They often recall Jenrick’s inexplicable role in awarding a fraudulent multi-million pound contract during the Covid pandemic. Kemi crosses a multi-lane street in search of an argument, one parliamentary group colleague said of the notoriously aggressive Badenoch. Another was quoted as saying that Patel was partly to blame for the election defeat because of her liberal immigration policies: she now appears as a convicted arsonist, wanting to water the roses. Bright prospects for journalists, lots of grey hair for Blackman.