Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick are through to the final two of the Tory leadership contest as a shock ballot of MPs dumps out the frontrunner James Cleverly. The Mail has more.
Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch will battle it out for the Tory crown after MPs sensationally evicted frontrunner James Cleverly tonight.
A day of extraordinary behind-the-scenes manoeuvring at Westminster culminated in the bombshell departure of the Shadow Home Secretary.
Having come first in the ballot of his colleagues yesterday, Mr. Cleverly slumped to third on 37 – behind both Ms Badenoch on 42 and Robert Jenrick on 41.
There were audible gasps in the Parliamentary committee room as the figures were read out.
The result sparked a bitter blame game between bewildered Tories – often described as the most duplicitous electorate in the world – with fevered speculation about dirty tricks by rival camps.
Some claimed that Mr. Cleverly’s allies had “loaned” support to Mr. Jenrick in a bid to secure an easier opponent in the vote by party members.
Others suggested the opposite, that Mr. Jenrick had marshalled extra backing for Mr. Cleverly in the previous round and then recalled it.
However, both teams denied using double-dealing tactics, and the reaction from many MPs was confusion.
Asked what had happened, one despairing MP who backed Mr. Cleverly said: “God knows.” They added: “Tory MPs are too inward looking.”
Other Conservatives griped that too many MPs were “thought they were in House of Cards“. Mr. Cleverly himself admitted it was “massively disappointing”.
Mr. Cleverly had taken a surprise lead in the vote yesterday, having been praised for his strong speech to party conference in Birmingham last week.
However, despite taking on the mantle of bookies’ favourite he slumped to third in a fourth and final round of Westminster voting this afternoon.
He had been expected to pick up most of the moderate votes of supporters of Tom Tugendhat, who was knocked out yesterday.
But he actually lost votes, which will fuel suspicions that his backers loaned too many votes to Mr. Jenrick in order to keep Ms. Badenoch out the final two today.
One veteran Tory aide said: “Some must have left James to try and stop the Right-winger they liked least… the Cleverly whips have lost control of the numbers.”
The shock will see Mr. Jenrick, the former Immigration Minister go up against Ms. Badenoch, the ex-Business Secretary, who is seen as the favourite of the grassroots, in a ballot of party member. The result will be announced on November 2nd.
It means that the next leader will be from the Right of the party, with both candidates taking a hard line on issues including immigration and woke culture.
Worth reading in full.
With two Right-of-centre candidates battling for members’ support, it’s certainly going to make for the most interesting Tory leadership race in a long while.
Personally I’ve been more encouraged by Jenrick’s strong stance on immigration and his five core principles for a “new Conservative party” than I have by Badenoch’s more equivocal comments on the ECHR – and her 2018 support for relaxing immigration rules hardly helps here (though she has since distanced herself from that). Jenrick has the kudos of quitting over the Sunak Government’s failure to get the Rwanda scheme right. On the other hand, his recent dismissive comments about the “culture war” were worrying – you’d never hear Kemi say anything like that! – and it appears that many people doubt the sincerity of his journey from wet centrist to hardliner. Call me naïve, but I tend to think that on immigration at least it is a genuine change of outlook born of fruitless years spent at the Government coalface. But I have to admit he might be putting at least some of it on. After all, politicians, and perhaps Tories especially, are notorious for saying one thing before an election and doing another on the other side of it. Surely, though, he must know he will crash and burn if that is his game. Kemi is a solid political performer who takes the fight to her opponents, a key quality in an opposition leader. But she also shoots from the hip – her maternity pay comments being an obvious example of a gaffe at a key moment of a kind she may be prone to.
All in all, at this point I’m rooting for a Jenrick victory – and trusting he’s good as his word. But the great thing about this contest is that I’d also be perfectly happy with a Badenoch win – as long as she tightens up her immigration stance.
The elephant in the room is that there will at some point need to be some kind of entente with Reform, if only because a divided Right can’t beat even a weak and unpopular Labour, and many Right-leaning voters will never trust the Tories again. For the benefit of the Tory faithful all candidates have foresworn such a deal, which is good politics for this leadership contest but will have to be revisited in the run-up to the next election when the lie of the land becomes clear. In the meantime we’re stuck with the Loony Left in charge of the country. We just have to hope the Right – both in the Conservative party and outside it – can get its act together and topple Starmer’s dysfunctional rabble in 2029 and spare us any more of its reign of misery than we have to endure.
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I thought Cleverly sounded relieved.
That is greatly to his credit.
Will it really matter who they pick – they are a busted flush
They are the official opposition and I think people will drift back to them from Reform – the nation had its chance and blew it. The time to destroy the Tory party was 2024. Too late now. Hope I am wrong.
Some may drift back …. but Reform is now gunning for Labour voters in the Red Wall. And working class voters who held their nose and voted for Johnson – who comprehensively betrayed them – are more likely to vote for Reform than a CONservative Leader who was a Minister during the Great Betrayal but, we’re supposed to believe, has now had a Damascene Conversion.
I hope you are right!
I tend to agree.
If anybody, I would be the textbook conservative voter. Yet I can’t vote for them.
My problem with the Conservative party in general is that:
My only sympathy for them is that Labour are much-much worse. The conservatives were incompetent but, perhaps, not intentionally evil.
I’m not feeling so charitable, they are weak and pretty damn stupid if they can’t see the way back to power, move back to centre right from the left
Well, if they are that stupid, then they deserve to disappear.
I think they are… or are not allowed to behave how they want to. Tend to lean towards the former tbh
I am convinced some of them are much worse than incompetent.
“despising their core voters” This never fails to make me smile: https://youtu.be/DT5tzzWhRAA?t=351
The Covid Tyranny; Net Zero economy-wrecking policy and mass immigration of 4 million in just 5 years (having “promised” to reduce it) looks remarkably like intentionally evil to me.
OFF – T. Interesting article in this months The Light Newspaper regarding the holding in Jail of Reiner Fuellmich. It is understood that his defence team has been banned from giving oral evidence. reports from the trial also suggest his lawyers are not being given details of new charges being brought against him.
It is claimed that the role of the German secret services was revealed to one of the defence lawyers in April this year in a leaked paper. The leaked paper, it is alleged, recommended finding ways to prosecute Fuellmich because of his popularity and involvement in a newly founded party could cause unforeseen political problems.
His supporters also claim that his rights were violated. Article 6 of the Convention on Human Rights which states: Everyone charged with a criminal offence must be informed as soon as possible of the charge and be able to prepare his defence.
Relevance to the article?
No relevance, hence the “Off – T[opic]” as a courtesy to the reader.
Off-T items, and I am a frequent poster thereof, get lost if they are posted in a thread earlier than the most current. It is as simple as that. Some people take exception but personally I welcome all Off-T contributions. If the subject is of no interest I ignore. In this case I believe news concerning poor Reiner Fuellmich is most welcome. A brave man who has been illegally imprisoned in the German Fourth Reich. So relevance to the current article is irrelevant.
“ So relevance to the current article is irrelevant.”
Exactly that…..It should not need pointing out on here of all places!
To be fair, we get so few comments on here that a few off-topic comments are not interfering with enjoyment of the site and any comments are IMO to be welcomed. I wish too many comments was an issue for DS.
I wonder why that might be…….
Not really:
It’s a crowded market, sceptics are few on the ground and probably the established alternative news sites have loyal followings
Or most of the comments to be found on here do not do much to encourage others to join in, debate…….
I find the comments variable but on average of higher quality/interest than comments on many much busier sites.
I think your experience is skewed because of your steadfast attempts to persuade people of the merits of military support for Ukraine and the military more generally, which most here do not agree with.
The reason that I regularly place pro Ukraine comments on here is precisely to generate debate, research, thought on that subject.
I have no interest in persuasion, only in perspective; balance; both sides of the argument.
One side of the argument is under-represented here, in my view, so I attempt to remedy that
Everyone is very much entitled to their own opinion
But it would be a great deal more interesting if commentators at least gave some appearance of having done a bit of general research to support their position.
As it is, much commentary on here closely resembles the off the top of the head, self indulgent, shallow, uninformed and superficial reactions of the echo chamber ‘twitterati’ who many call something else; unreadable.
I think debates could be encouraged if there was a way you were alerted to replies. At the moment it requires you to go back and search.
I receive my Daily Sceptic update in the early hours of the morning, so am often late to the party as regards to commenting, and I am sure my comments are generally not read.
Underneath the “new comment” box on each article there is an envelope icon with “subscribe” next to it which gives you the option to get notifications either for all comments on the article or just for replies your comments, and there is also a bell icon next to the “post comment” button when you do a reply that will notify of replies to that specific comment of yours. I am not however aware of a way to default that to true for your user account.
I skim all the articles and comments. I am sure your comments are read by quite a few people.
The fuellmich thing combined with the idiotic, immoral and surely illegal persecution of cj hopkins is deeply deeply disturbing.
It speaks to a willingness to stoop to any depths to shut down free speech.
If we are not careful in 5 years time any sort of dissent will be impossible or punishable by imprisonment across the western world, and truth or reason will be no defence.
Sounds like the MPs cocked up in an attempt to make sure the “right” candidate had the best chance in the final vote. Serves them right.
I don’t trust any of them – all of them (the leadership candidates and most MPs) supported lockdowns and “vaccines”. I may once have considered voting Tory again if there were to be sufficient signs of contrition for the 14 years of betrayal, but I doubt I will now. Reform are a credible alternative and I don’t see much hope that the Tories will ever be a serious “right wing” party – I don’t think many of the 6 million people who voted for them at the last election want to be seen as “right wing” or want the Tories to be “right wing” – they just want a more genteel version of socialism.
To hell with the lot of them.
A true right wing Tory would be confirming their commitment to an end to ALL immigration, immediate deportation of all illegals, destruction of all NGO’s, withdrawal from the WHO, UN, NATO and proscribing of the WEF, immediate round-up of all those involved in the imposition of the C1984 scamdemic and treason trials for the likes of Bliar, Call me Dave, Johnson, May, Kneel and thousands more. And that’s just a start.
In other words I am not interested in the bubble gum tories who will forever remain the most horrendous stain on this country.
A robust post – but I can’t disagree.
If only the Conservatives had taken “right of centre” positions in 1997 when Blair was elected. I never understood why they lurched to the left instead of opposing the labour party at the time.
I guess they saw how well Bliar was polling and thought ‘we want some of that’?
“bubble gum Tories” lol this phrase could take off
Thanks tof.
Now they really look like sincere smiles. It is like they’re living in 1987. Things are changing big time. This level of trying to cling on to the pretence because your’e petrified of the abyss is absurd. It will eat you even more quickly if you are petrified and false.
There is no stopping the Anglo-Americans now. Officials from other countries are leaving the Anglosphere quickly. You have no control over your government or your own destiny. The time is too short for you to take it back. And so you need to seriously ponder your own position.
You are not coming back. They are not coming back. If you have some concept of restroration or restitutiuon then you are very wrong. Is is more like you re being introduced to upheaval.
Only small number of Brits who liisten to the real news. If you have the eyes to see it you will see that the whole situation has spiralled out of control in the last few days. It is like an uncoiled spring it will go where it will. I just hope that you can accept defeat with magnaminity.
IMO the 4 million plus who voted Reform are unlikely to return to back to the Tories. Probably not all Tories but mostly. So Kemi B or Bobby R will need to swallow their pride at some stage and form some form of an alliance with Reform. By the next election Reforms polling may even exceed the Torys in fact.
I’m a long time Tory voter who voted for Reform his time. My worry is that a divided right will keep Labour in power indefinitely
I had kind of hoped for Cleverly to be chosen. It would have been the final straw for the conservatives.
So less likely to split the vote during the next election.
Hilarious …. the LibCON Party Grandees must be absolutely apoplectic.
Still, they’ve still got Gove protege, WEF-approved, Badenoch on the ticket, so all is not lost.
I am bemused at your preferring the obviously unsound jenrick to obviously sound kemi.
Yes you are being unbelievably naive.
Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum – both accomplices in the ruination of the Tory Party and the Country, both members of that gang of deceivers and pathological liars called The Conservative Parliamentary Party.
“The elephant in the room is that there will at some point need to be some kind of entente with Reform, if only because a divided Right can’t beat even a weak and unpopular Labour…”
That would just continue a divided Right, and anyway entente is two-way: Farage’s stated aim is the destruction of the Tory Party – following the Canadian model – with a new “Conservative” Party nothing to do with the old.
People who still support the Conservative Party as is, need to take a look round, face reality, sit down and have a chat with themselves.