And then there were two

In a shock reversal of fortune the bookies favourite for the Conservative Party leadership contest, James Cleverley, failed to make it to the final stage. So members will be able to choose between Kemi Badenoch ("5%-10% of all civil servants should probably be in jail") and Robert Jenrick whose main claim to fame was fast-tracking a billionaire media tycoon's housing development to enable him to avoid a social levy for building affordable homes.

Both candidates are competing to be more right wing and anti-social than the other, apparently believing the reason for their party's recent misfortune is that they were not hostile enough to immigrants, foreigners, the homeless, etc.

Any more of this and Keir Starmer will have to declare another large gift in the members' register 😃

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Picklebobble2 · 56-60, M

It's all part of the implosion that follows a party so extreme in it's collective views it can't function anymore.

So they'll pay lip service to 'the fallen'; entertain Jenrick and his preferred nonsense in the hope somebody else will start to rally 'Middle-England grass roots support' before they have to admit to failing their own brand and pray that relations with Europe and the U.S. improve and somehow by association, their own approval rating, otherwise the 'unthinkable' has to be considered a real probability !

Accept Farage into the Conservative Party.
By some form of vote/gerrymander make him leader thereby killing the threat from Reform.
The Conservative Party then (theoretically) returns to the 'Centre-Right'.
And round and round we go.

SunshineGirl · 36-40, F

@Picklebobble2 Looking at the party membership today I think no subterfuge is necessary . . they would back him overwhelmingly!

But not great for the country or parliamentary democracy. We need a strong and competent opposition. Farage does not have the discipline to provide this.

Picklebobble2 · 56-60, M

@SunshineGirl Yes I think what the country wants is a Prime Minister shouting louder than the right-wing press.
That'll do for a start.

Government only functions well if it has an opposition clear on where it wants to hold them to account, and has a credible alternative to show the country and the wider world.

As for Farage himself i think he'll make the current divisions look like an argument at nursery once (if) he gets there.

MartinII · 70-79, M

Your first paragraph is fair fun, but there is absolutely no basis for your claim that Jenrick and Badenoch are competing to be more right-wing (evidence please!). And your implicit assertion that right-wing policies are anti-social is simply insulting. Personally I think that quite a lot of left-wing policies are anti-social.

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MartinII · 70-79, M

@Burnley123 Sorry, don't know what your point is. Something left out, perhaps?

SunshineGirl · 36-40, F

@MartinII Despite neither of them having previous ministerial involvement with immigration, both made this the centrepiece of their campaigns, indicating that they are more interested in competing with Nigel Farage for right wing votes than rebuilding a moderate democratic party with wider appeal.

Stating that 25,000-50,000 public servants should be locked up counts as pretty anti-social in my book. Especially when thse same workers are prevented by political impartiality rules from responding.

MartinII · 70-79, M

@SunshineGirl I don't think Badenoch has made immigration the centre of her campaign (Jenrick has), nor do I think that support for a strong and effective immigration policy is by any means exclusively right-wing. I think all the candidates would have agreed that somehow the Conservative party has to recreate a coalition embracing all strands of conservative opinion. There are of course different ways of trying to achieve that, and whatever route the eventual leader chooses it won't be easy!

As to public servants being locked up, I assume that was a joke, albeit perhaps in poor taste. But as a civil servant all my working life, I can assure you that in my time 5-10% ought not to have been civil servants. Of course, the same could be said of the employees of any large organisation.

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