Post
by IvanV » Wed Sep 11, 2024 12:33 pm
The one so obscure I can never remember his name - quickly looks it up - Mel Stride, is unsurprisingly out. And so we are left with Jenrick - who came top again, Badenoch, Cleverley and Tugendhat. There's a widening gap behind Badenoch so it is looking more likely the choice offered to the party members after the party conference will be Jenrick and Badenoch. I remain astonished that Jenrick is leading, I couldn't imagine him having any popularity. But the other two right wingers look equally unelectable from this distance.
With four candidates remaining, we've arrived at a weird parallel with the Labour leadership election, when Milliband resigned after losing the 2015 election. The 4 candidates then were 3 continuity candidates, and someone else. Just like here we have, in effect, 3 continuity candidates and someone else. And similarly to 2015, numerous Labour voters were pissed off with continuity, as they felt Labour hadn't done enough for them under Blair/Brown, which is a large part of why Labour did so badly in the 2015 election. The Tories have also been kicked out because the voters are similarly pissed off with continuity in the Tories, which has amounted to continuing chaos and inequality and weak economic performance, even if Sunak was quite as bad as Truss.
One difference is that in the Labour case the someone else was an extremist - Corbyn - and the continuity candidates were moderates. Whereas for the conservatives, it's the odd one out who is the moderate. In each case, we would say the odd one had no chance, at this point, but it didn't transpire that way for Labour.
For the more important difference is that Labour then had a system facilitating entry-ists to quickly join the party and elect the non-continuity candidate. But because those entry-ists did not represent the broader requirements of Labour voters either, the non-continuity candidate was even worse than the continuity ones. It was the wrong kind of non-continuity candidate for Labour success. The actual Conservative party membership rather like the continuity candidates, and rules prevent entry-ists suddenly piling in and choosing the odd-one-out. For having observed how Corbyn was elected, all political parties have now ensured their rules prevent something like that happening.
