The contest to see who becomes the next Conservative party leader and thus prime minister was remarkable for its swiftness. As this timeline of events shows, Liz Truss resigned on the afternoon of Thursday and by Monday morning the contest had been settled.
In the end Rishi Sunak managed to avoid a vote of the Conservative party membership (which he lost to Truss less than two months ago) when his rivals Boris Johnson and Penny Mordaunt withdrew their candidacies because they could not reach the high bar of 100 MP support that the party leaders had set for them to be nominated. The party leaders had clearly wanted to avoid putting it to a vote of the party membership, given how disastrous their selection of Truss had been and the likelihood of Johnson winning it this time, and their plan succeeded.
Sunak, apart from having South Asian ethnicity and being a Hindu, seems to be cut from the same cloth as other Conservative party leaders and prime ministers, being wealthy and privileged and having attended an elite private school (Winchester College) and Oxford University and has admitted in the past to socializing with only the wealthy and aristocratic and not having had any friends from outside that class. In addition he is married to a very wealthy woman, the daughter of an Indian billionaire. So he is, apart from his ethnic origins, just like the others in the British oligarchy. Although he is viewed as a safer set of hands to steward the economy than the pitiful Truss, he was once a supporter of Johnson and served as his Chancellor of the Exchequer until his resignation helped to topple Johnson.
Sunak has called for unity and stability, warning that the party risks serious losses if they don’t stop all the intra-party warfare. He is right but he should not be too optimistic that his call will be heeded for long. Right now the party is celebrating for having avoided a bruising leadership fight but you can be sure that that peace will not last very long. Ambitious Conservative politicians are probably already at work behind the scenes getting ready to topple Sunak if he should prove unable to revive the party’s fortunes in the two years left before elections have to be called in January 2025.
Although Johnson said he had obtained the support on 102 MPs to qualify but decided to withdraw for the sake of the country, that is very likely a face-saving lie to avoid the humiliation of not actually having received the threshold of 100. His statement of withdrawal was typical Johnson, full of braggadocio that he would have won the party election and led the party to another victory in a general election in 2024 but that he had decided to withdraw for the good of the country. Right. His suggestion that he had asked Sunak and Mordaunt to “come together in the national interest” is disingenuous. Presumably he suggested some form of power sharing among the three. But given his ego, whatever he proposed is likely to have given him primacy, at least at the beginning. But who would ever trust a liar like Johnson to keep his end of any deal?
Johnson and many of his supporters are reportedly angry with Sunak, seeing him as someone who stabbed Johnson in the back by orchestrating cabinet resignations and triggering his downfall. I would not be surprised if they are already seeking out ways to undermine Sunak to make sure that he fails and thus get Johnson back as the party leader. What should be worrying for Johnson is that Conservative-backing newspapers, once his biggest supporters, are now warning against Johnson returning as party leader. Given the clout newspapers seem to have in UK politics, that is bad news for him. Of course, the papers can switch their views if they feel the need to. In the case of Truss, they initially praised her and her budget before abruptly making an about face when things went south.
UK politics and the media are not for the fainthearted.
One thing I haven’t seen discussed is this: the Parliamentary Conservative Party have just turned round to the wider membership and basically said: “You’re too stupid to choose a leader, we’re reversing your decision and choosing the person you specifically chose against last time.” Are the membership just going to accept that?
UK politics and the media are not for the fainthearted.
What, you think the Tory coalition are tough? Your entire OP just admitted they’re nothing but spineless pathetic self-dealing cowards, vacillators and backstabbers, who can’t come up with either a decent vision for their country or the sincere passion to pursue it. Why do you think newspapers have all that clout you speak of? It’s because none of the people with actual responsibility can stand up to the most irresponsible elements in their “coalition.”
It’s not like they actually get to vote on the prime minister anyway, and let’s not even start on the House of Lords or the monarchy…. But this all kind of par for the course, no?
They are pretty clearly saying that they don’t trust voters to vote on any MPs in an election right now (meaning it’s not just about the prime minister spot), because they think they would lose control to the opposing oligarchs. Still, that also seems pretty standard for things that are routinely accepted about their whole system.
@1: What other choice do they have? Their previous favorites both ended up highlighting the worst, most shameful aspects of their plutocrat-centered agenda; and now they need someone more competent to help them to cover all that back up.
@3 I wasn’t talking about voters in general, but the wider Conservative Party membership who have just had the choice of how *their* party is run taken away from them.
@4 Well, that is the question. What control can party members exert over the party management? I suspect the party constitution doesn’t just say “pay your membership dues and then fuck off”, so there’s probably something they can do if they’re annoyed enough about it.
Not in so many words, no, but… This is the Tory party we’re talking about. Deference to established power is pretty much their core brand. What I think is rather more likely to upset the membership is the appointment of someone with a dusky complexion and a foreign name, who hasn’t even assimilated enough to abandon his heathen faith in favour of the C of E.
But the Tory party is already a long way towards the nirvana of getting rid of its rank and file membership anyway. Given the age profile, one hard winter should pretty much finish the job…
Ah, I misunderstood. You meant slightly wider, but not so wide as to include everyone who’s Conservative. I’m not nearly as sure why I should care so much about their feelings, but anyway, I bet they’re probably used to putting up with a lot of bullshit too. It’s kind of hard to say whether they’re more inclined to see this sort of thing as a serious transgression which must be dealt with accordingly or just business as usual. If the deal is that they can still be mini-oligarchs and reap those rewards, they’re going to be a lot more accepting of it.
Unionize? Go on strike? (Only kidding. They’d certainly prefer to find a union and bust it.)
I thought he decided to withdraw for the good of the party , not the country -- There were a few members threatening to turn independent were Johnson to win -- which was almsst a certainty if it went to the members.
It’s almost as if it’s not the individual that’s the problem, but the ideology. Almost….
@8 He kicked MPs out for being disloyal to him before. With a still >70 majority, and given that it’s Boris, why would he care now?
@9 Doesn’t matter who they select as the new PM, it’s still a Tory…
xohjoh2n:
What a silly thing to write.
(It’s tantamount to claiming every single Tory is identical to every other one and will seek the very same policies)
Boris Johnson didn’t say anything about the good of either the party or the country in his withdrawal statement. What he did say was:
There’s nothing in there about the good of anybody or anything other than Boris Johnson, as I read it. Assuming that you actually believe he had the numbers in the first place…
Yes. Because they have no choice. I predicted they’d be excluded from this round, given that their judgement is clearly so shit.
@Raging Bee, 2: The Torys are not in coalition with anyone. They are a single party. They may not seem like it, but they are. They are, even now, a damned sight more cohesive than any left wing party in the UK in my lifetime.
@John Morales, 11:
What a silly thing to write. It’s simply saying that, regardless of the details of their policies (which may differ around the edges) they’ll still, at root, be Tory policies, focussed on transferring from the poor to the rich. But of course you knew that.
I’m chuckling at the reappointment of Suella Cowardlierman. I said somewhere (here?) at the time that her “mistake” seemed conveniently quick and easy to do, something she could resign over and appear to be principled (thus not coincidentally weakening the then PM Liz Truss (remember her?)), but something also not THAT bad, so that she could make a comeback in due course. I didn’t expect “due course” to translate to “less than a week”, but hey, a week is a long time in politics. (Indeed, I think I said somewhere last Wednesday that it was getting so that an HOUR was a long time in politics).
sonofrojblake:
Of course I did, and still do.
Since the claim I specifically quoted is “Doesn’t matter who they select as the new PM, it’s still a Tory…”, it ineluctably follows that the only way it cannot possibly matter is if ¬”every single Tory is identical to every other one”.
(Logical implication)
They don’t have to be literally identical in policy for the quoted statement to be true. Of course you knew that too, but you being you, you had to focus on irrelevant minutia.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/26/rishi-sunak-dismantles-liz-truss-legacy-fracking-pensions-defence
To some, none of this matters.