Go on. Admit it. There’s a small part of you that’s missed the psychodramas. Not necessarily the existential angst of lying in bed each night wondering what fresh hell the government was going to unleash on us the following day. But certainly the infighting. For the last five years or so, watching the Tories implode with little help from the opposition parties had become one of the country’s favourite spectator sports.
The general election had put an end to that. Most of us had forgotten what serious government looked like. Ministers going about their business in a calm and capable manner. No major crises. No meltdowns. Even seven Labour MPs losing the whip over the two-child benefit cap blew over in a matter of 24 hours. Hardly a ripple.
Of course, it’s early days for too much to have gone wrong. Labour are spending as much time uncovering hidden Tory horrors as they are getting on with their own programme. At some point, it’s inevitable that things will go tits up. They always do.
No government is perfect and something always comes back to bite you. But we’re not at that point yet. Keir Starmer has made a confident start both on the global and domestic stages. And if it all feels, well, a bit boring, then he will settle for that. Prime ministers like boring. The country needs a bit of boring. It means that things are going reasonably well. Long may it continue.
The good news, though, is that the Conservative fun factory is back up and running. As in, fully dysfunctional. The even better news is that this time the fun comes with no personal jeopardy to the country. Because whatever the outcome, none of it really matters. The Tories are no longer – for the next few years at least – a danger to anyone. Except themselves. They are an irrelevance. They now exist purely as entertainment for entertainment’s sake. An amusing diversion for lovers of political theatre.
Nor is the fun time-limited. This one is set to run and run. OK, the Tory leadership contest officially ends in early November, but the reality is that the show will extend for months. Years even. Because it’s in the nature of the party’s rules to ensure that the only possible result is a leader who will inevitably need to be replaced before too long. It is the Tory party membership who have the final say and they – there is no easy way of sugaring this – are all completely mad. Only interested in electing someone who is as crazy as they are. Someone the country would never consider putting in government. It’s win-win for the neutral.
Given the nature of the contest, it was only fitting that the first person to announce they would be running was a joke candidate. Step forward James Cleverly. Now I dare say that to some new Tory MPs – there are a few, I promise – Jimmy Dimly might seem impressive. Quite the catch. Former foreign and home secretary. So one or two might have been tempted into nominating him.
But step back and think about it. What exactly has Jimmy D ever done in government? Your mind is probably blank. Because the answer is very little. Apart from turning left into first-class on boarding aeroplanes on government business. As home secretary, he was worse than useless. His was the chronicle of a death foretold. As foreign secretary, he showed a rare moment of insight by declaring the Rwanda plan to be “batshit crazy”. So it was just his luck to be put in charge of implementing it. With inevitable results. The thing to remember about Dimly is that he’s not very bright. A born follower. Something of a drawback in a leadership contest.
Next to put his name forward on Thursday morning was Tom Tugendhat. The trouble with Tom is that he comes with way too much baggage. He is officially one of the few sane Tory MPs left, someone who polls suggest that people outside the padded cells of the Tory membership would consider as prime minister material. This obviously makes him a complete non-starter. No one thought to be borderline sensible has a viable role in the modern Tory party.
To be fair to Tom, he has been doing his best to prove that he, too, can be a full-blown mentalist. So he wrote a piece for the Telegraph in which he promised to take the UK out of the European convention on human rights if necessary. A clear pitch to the Tory membership that he was willing to be as mad as they were.
Only his heart wasn’t really in it, because on the morning media round he couldn’t commit to what he had put in print. He knows it’s a bad idea to turn the country into an international pariah. To give up so much of value in search of an illusory, short-term gain. He also knows it’s not what most of the UK wants. So, even if he were to make it to the last two, then the membership would reject him. There again, he did back Liz Truss, so you never know.
A little while later, Robert Jenrick also announced his candidacy. The former immigration minister who resigned because he wasn’t good enough. With Honest Bob, you can judge the man by the company he keeps. It was Honest Bob who eased through the planning permission for Tory donor and pornographer Richard “Dirty” Desmond. And Honest Bob’s campaign manager is none other than Danny Kruger, a man with so little judgment that he makes a habit of attaching himself to losing, lunatic rightwing causes.
It is Honest Bob’s belief that the reason the Tories lost the last election was because they weren’t rightwing enough. He has yet to realise that losing the country’s trust, crashing the economy, destroying public services and leaving everyone worse off might have played a part. He probably never will. Some things will always be a mystery to him.
There again, the same applies to most of the other contenders who have yet to announce they are standing. We have Priti Patel: sacked for breaking the ministerial code and running her own foreign policy agenda. Erstwhile best mate of Nigel Farage. Suella Braverman: sacked for breaking the ministerial code, and who has been trying to reinvent herself this week as the compassionate face of bigotry. Kemi Badenoch: the most divisive woman in politics. A woman who hates the electorate almost as much as she hates her colleagues. And herself. She could start a fight with her reflection. Lastly Mel Stride. We began and end with a joke. A man who has confused his own electoral survival with importance. The Mark Harper of this leadership race.
So, as we head towards recess, let’s allow ourselves time to enjoy the spectacle. Blue on blue. A race to the bottom. Let the fun begin.
