Government is not proving much fun for Labour. Their determination to match Jeremy Hunt’s tax and spend plans pre-election, has left them with an entirely predictable set of headaches. The row over the winter fuel allowance cut is nothing compared with what’s coming if no money is forthcoming to fix the various fires blazing across the public sector.
It’s not as if Labour has a huge amount of political capital to waste either. MPs are well aware that their electoral position is precarious. The downside of winning such a big majority on a third of the national vote share is that a large number of seats are at risk from a small swing against the party.
There is, though, a countervailing factor to cheer up even the gloomiest Labour backbencher: the state of the Conservative Party.
Having (just) survived complete annihilation at the election the Tories have launched a leadership contest that is so far is conforming to the classic post-defeat trend, that all parties engage in, of putting their collective fingers in their ears and singing “na na na we can’t hear you” to the electorate.
This is compounded by the obvious limitations of the four remaining candidates. That Robert Jenrick – a man so unlikeable that he once lost a student union election in which he was the only candidate – is currently the betting favourite, is indicative of the mess in which they find themselves.
As one would expect for someone so nakedly ambitious he has run a cynically effective campaign, by taking the most right-wing positions on subjects like the European Court of Human Rights, despite his initial incarnation as a Cameroon Remainer. But his appeal to the public is questionable, even amongst those who agree with his policy positions. As one Tory to Reform switcher said in a recent focus group: “I feel like if I close my eyes he was saying all the right things….but when I opened my eyes and looked at his face, he looks kind of smug and smarmy.”
Kemi Badenoch is second favourite. She’s by far the most interesting of the candidates, both in terms of her backstory and her bluntness. Getting attention, a perennial problem for opposition leaders, would not be a challenge. The issue is that, unlike early Thatcher who deployed bluntness alongside tact and charm as needed, Badenoch deploys it in all situations. Thus she has already made plenty of home team enemies. Perhaps relatedly, for all her spark, she doesn’t have many notable achievements from her time as a minister.
Then there’s James Cleverly, who, conversely, is the most emollient candidate. Of all the Tory cabinet ministers he probably had the best reputation amongst civil servants, and was generally seen to have managed departments well. But that’s what he is, a middle manager. He’s always gone with the grain, always been a loyal soldier, always gone along with policies like Rwanda despite knowing they were daft. These are not the qualities of a leader.
And finally there’s Tom Tugendhat, who has somehow got a reputation as being moderate because he didn’t like Boris Johnson, and has decided he needs to play against this by taking a series of immoderate positions. This is the Rishi Sunak trap: moderate vibes and illiberal policies just means you end up with no one liking you.
These four will be given prime slots at the Tory conference, before MPs pick the final two for members to choose from. With no overwhelming favourite, and such a small electorate, it’s impossible to know who this final two will be. Or, for that matter, what the membership will decide. It’s widely assumed that whoever has the most right wing policy positions will win, which is why Jenrick is now leading in the betting, but that’s not necessarily true. Traits like consistency and loyalty also matter to members.
But by far the bigger problem is that none of the candidates seem to have understood why the party did so badly or what would be required to overhaul its dire reputation. For all the talk in their speeches about change, their proposed political strategies, insofar as they can be ascertained from a series of platitudes, seem painfully similar to what’s come before. And for the same reason: they cannot reconcile the contradictions between the beliefs of their core supporters and those of the voter coalition they need. In the rest of this post I’ll look at the dimensions of this trap in which they find themselves and whether there is any way out.
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