Coffee House Shots
Tory leadership race latest: what's going on?
Get three month's spectator now for just £3. Go to spectator.co.uk/trial Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm Matty Dunne and today I'm joined by Fraser Nelson and Lisa Boles. Katie, there was a meeting last night between the party board and the 1922 Executive Committee. What was decided about the Tory leadership contest that we're sort of looking at and is there a timeline that we can start to see things progress from here? So you say last night, in a way the meeting was last night, but it wasn't meant to be. It ran on to the evening because it went on for such a long period of time. This was a five-hour meeting, as I understand it, of the Conservative board. And the hope had been this would be the meeting where they could say, "Here is the timetable. We are going to potentially have nominations next week to get your name into the race." Then a summer where if you want to go on holiday, you can. If you want to go on holiday at various Tory associations, you can take your pick. There will be a competitive advantage for some. And then when MPs returned after the summer recess, in September, you would have the knockout stages ahead of either a candidate being picked just before the party conference or having an overparty conference where you would have, for example, the final hustings on the first night, the Sunday, boating on the Monday, a winner announced on the Tuesday and the leaders' speech on the Wednesday. Now, this is what I think many in the party board want to happen. I think it's what many around Russia soon might want to happen. The problem is there are lots of Tory MPs and Tory candidates who are thinking about running for this with different views. And it seems that the 2022 committee before the Conservative board didn't bring any clarity. And there is a push by some Tory MPs, some of them attached or loosely linked to would-be teams. To say, no, we should go much more slowly. Why rush? We don't need to have a leader by conference. We could have a leader by November, for example. And I mean, I think briefly, just to sum up the two camps, if it's the go now camp, or the wait for a very long time camp. I mean, those who want to wait will say the party's really hurt and peas are really hurt. If you rush into a contest, it could become, you know, pretty vicious. And also whoever wins might not have the party behind them. And they would argue the longer you go, the more like that is to happen. The counter to that is freefold, first, which is money. The party is fast running out of money. Obviously, the campaigning efforts in the short campaign, the figures are public available to not go well for the Tory party. And therefore, do they have the cost? Do they have the budget to keep doing, have their own events, have their own event and answer, but also just to keep this path of almost not having anything to say, because most donors do not want to give any more money to the Tory party until they know who the leader is and what direction it is going to take. So that is stopping donations generally. Then I think you have the Rishisunak problem, which is, yes, he said, had step in, but I think that was an off of an expiry date. And that expiry date was probably the summer recess a few weeks after that. I don't think Rishisunak, from what I understand, wants to be intermuted by, you know, November, just before Christmas. So if they really want to go long, they had to get a different interim leader and that Oliver Dowden does not want to do it, apparently, despite being the deputy. And at that point, if you are having to pick an interim leader, shouldn't you just pick a new leader? And then finally, which links to this, is it really sustainable to have no leader all the way, you know, when you're expecting a budget in October, for example, not having a Tory leader to respond to it? And yes, Jeremy Hunt could. Yes, Rishisunak could. But they look like a lame duck shadow cabinet right now. So it's not going to be the same as having somebody who's picked. He's trying to forge a new direction. And Fraser, as Katie says, talking about Rishisunak and a potential interim leader before leadership contest starts, what have you made of the no-ex-pay minister in opposition? He's taking it very seriously. In fact, Kier Starmer himself is saying how states been like and cooperative, and Rishisunak is being. So it seems right now that perhaps more of his time is taking on hand over, as I like, than it is running an opposition party. He had that fractious shadow cabinet meeting where he wanted to sort of skim over the post-mortem and Kimi Meydnick held into account, saying, no, no, you think we're, of course, we're going to talk about this. And I think that went down quite badly, actually. So it seems that there's a consensus right now that there is no real point at the moment anyway, in Rishisunak having recommendations and trying to do like what did I get wrong, et cetera. So I think his shadow team were going through the motions of opposition, not doing it particularly with any sort of passion right now. I think, especially after January the 6th, there is a huge importance placed on how power is transitioned in Britain. So I think that Rishisunak himself wants to show that you can be friendly, you can be completely respectful to the guy who beats you. You can even make cooperative to the guy who beats you. So I think that's the stage that we're in. There are a whole load of people who would like to pretty much lynch him for calling that early election, especially as we find out a few days ago. But the UK is now going to have one of the highest growth rates in Europe next year, et cetera. But what's the point in firing bullets into a political corpse? So I think the Tories are just agreeing, which is pointless right now, to fight the fighting will come in the summer. And Katie, we'll look at what a possible leadership contest could look like. Who are the runners and riders at present? Appreciate it was not an official list as of yet, but we're ready to stand at the moment. So I think at the moment, it is still Cammie Badenox to lose in the sense that she is the bookies favourite. She is, when you speak to MPs, they, I think they do think she has a significant number. I don't think it's a dead sir. She makes the final two, but a bit like Boris Johnson, previously when he ran for the leadership, there was a sense that if you got through the parliamentary party, the membership would probably get behind that person. And all the membership polling so far, Cammie Badenox comes out on top against the potential other candidates. So I think if she got to the final two, she would probably have to have a disaster, an error, you know, quite a moment. You know, some colleagues will say she can be quite blunt or abrasive. She's quite straight to the point, something like that, which might. But I think probably the bigger issue there would be just making sure you have enough MPs. And then I think that there's a question as to in terms of the very Tory families or tribes, you have James Clareman Lee and Tom Teganham. You also have Victoria Atkins, who was doing lots of press early on to the point that some thought, oh, is she going to be the one nation candidate? But I think those three politicians would be taking MP nominations, probably the centre, left to centre pool of Tory opinion. And then you'd have the fight for the right at the party in terms of MP nominations. And I think they're pretty Patel, Robert Generate, potentially Sue Adam Braverman, and then Kemi Beijnock, I think it'd be some of between the two, because she would be, you know, the fact that Michael Gove endorsed her last time. But also she was getting support from some of the right. And therefore you can almost see a way that James Clareman Lee or Tom Teganham might get to the final two. But I think the question is, do we think the membership would then pick them over, perhaps a candidate more on the right to the party, because go back to the most recent Tory leadership contest where members got to have a say. And it was pretty assured that Rishi Cinek would get there. It's just that there was such a vicious fight on the other side to be the candidate who came through on the votes at the right of the party, because there was a view that whoever got there, whether it's Kemi Beijnock, Sue Adam Braverman, or Liz Truss would have a really good chance of beating Rishi Cinek. I think that probably words will come back to haunt me. But right now, I think Kemi Beijnock looks competitive. I think that both Robert Generate and Priti Patel cannot be ruled out. I think Priti Patel is able to model herself as a bit of a unifier because she gets on with Boris Johnson and his supporters. She has befriended Liz Truss since, I think, Liz Truss left government. So would she get the popcorn endorsement with that matter? You know, it's a bit addicting, it's impossible that, you know, and she also gets on with team Rishi Cinek, who remember her being quite helpful to them near the final days in a way that Sue Adam Braverman and others are not. And I think it's quite unique in the Tory party to have Truss Camp, Johnson Camp, and Sue Net Camp, all happy to live with you existing. It's not played to others. Only thing I'm Robert Generate, because it's hard to know, but it does feel that he's taken some of the support that Sue Adam Braverman might have. And he's moved that across. And then also, I think he's done a pretty good job of befriending new MPs, of course, with no particular, you know, long term aim or calculation. But I think that there are also some MPs probably center, right or center, who has mentioned Robert Generate to me. So I think that he is pitching probably his pitch would be that he, you know, is to the right on immigration, look, that he'd quit over a wander and are not going hard enough, look, no flights. But actually he can sound quite measured in a way that he would probably try and suggest his supporters would try and suggest Sue Adam Braverman. Or perhaps they would even probably pitch himself as the more the safest pair of hands on the right, compared to some of the other candidates saying, we can't have another Liz trust situation where, you know, it goes wrong at some point. And he's forced it forward. And so I think those are the main ones. And then Tom, too, you can heart amongst the membership polling, even though he has seen as quite one nation, I think that you can see that he does have some appeal is just a calculation of candidates on the right is that they would expose his positions and that he is actually much softer than them. And they went as to him in that way. Fraser, as Casey was saying, you know, it looks likely to be candidates on both and the right, but also the one nation group that put themselves forward. What kind of leader do the conservatives need at the moment to pull the party back together again? My suspicion is there going to be at least two leaders of conservatives, perhaps three before of the next general election. And now perhaps you could argue we need an interim leader just to fill it and get the recommendations out of the way and then one to go into the campaign. But either going to be playing for keeps as it were. I think it's quite simple. You need a leader who's going to be able to get relevance because it's been quite difficult to get a look in, given how few MPs are Tories have got. So you'll need somebody who the camera is like who's got an ability to bend the universe towards them as it were in publicity. Somebody is able to articulate a clear vision because that's what the conservatives have lacked. What are the concern if you want people to rally around your values? You need somebody to make it crystal clear what those values are. And fundamentally, somebody who will be in a position to really exploit labor difficulties, which come they will absolutely certainly. We need to look at how few share the votes, 34% only the labor got. This is the lowest share that any governing party has had in post-war politics. So it is possible, I think, to get back in one term. But only if you choose the right leader. So those are the criteria. Personally, I would be if I was advising the conservative party. I'm not, I think they're pretty far gone as a party, I have to say. But I would not mess around and try to get somebody who can fix the machine first and the gap get back into the argument. This is what the New Zealand conservatives did after they got a really bad defeats at the hand of Senator Hearn, just after the last COVID thing. But then they managed very quickly to reconstruct the apparatus to get to work out how they organized, to think the values they arranged. They did a top to bottom reconstruction job. And they did it in time to win quite a convincing general election victory. So the New Zealand model, I think, is the one to follow. And the conservatives should be thinking, how do we get back in one term? Kate, there's some thought maybe that the long leadership contest goes on. And there is not a firm candidate in place that reform will continue to pick up support across the country. Is this something you think that is going to be a real threat to the conservatives over the next couple of months? There's obviously an opportunity for Nigel Farage. He spent the election campaign saying he would be the real opposition to fill the void left by the Tory party. He was also in Washington, though, running the comments. Comments obviously not sitting today. So I think there's a question as to where he focuses his time. But of course he has a platform when he's near Donald Trump, whatever. And he's going to pay attention. I do think there's a risk that they leave it for such a period that by the time they have a leader, no one actually really cares too much what they say. And yes, you need someone who's going to get that attention. And but there's clearly a middle ground here. And I think, you know, reform, the best hope for the Tories is to reform, start tearing chunks out of one another and they can't keep their base together. If they are united front, then that is potentially difficult, particularly when they can go for questions and Richie Cunac is just not going to get that much attention as an interim leader saying the Labour have done X wrong in a way a new leader or Nigel Farage would thank you, Katie. Thank you, Fraser, and thank you for listening. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]