The Friday Blog: Blood Sports
I was as good as my word last time and did not tune into the live on air Tory leadership debates. Just as well. I do not have the stomach for blood sports. To be honest with you, I do not even enjoy watching boxing, let alone some of the more extreme stuff that takes place in cages. I used to quite like the wrestling on a Saturday afternoon. Mick McManus, Mark “Rollerball” Rocco, Kendo Nagasaki, Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks and the deaf one that ended up as a Bouncer at Roosters, the Stafford nightclub in which my uncle once had a share. He was actually a bit of a liability as a doorman, but that is another story for another day. The wrestling, even if Kent Walton believed, was all a put up, the fighters were no more than circus tumblers, and nobody actually got hurt.
Sunday night’s encounter with the remaining five was so brutal that there was not to be another. Possibly never again. At the end of it, Rishi Sunak turned to Liz Truss and asked, “Why are we doing this?” The Party’s instinct for self-preservation, which perversely involves ripping itself to pieces every few years, kicked in as it became apparent the only winners were the opposition parties. Truss would not have been too unhappy. She has been noticeably absent from the media rounds the other candidates had exposed themselves to, and I imagine her team may consider her to be a bit gaff prone. Certainly, confusing the Baltic and Black Seas recently presented Russian diplomats with an open goal. Not everyone, however capable, is good on their feet, and some who are highly incapable, are. To be fair, she performed better at the weekend, when her main rival at the time, Penny Mordaunt, appeared to lose ground.
On Monday, and very much as expected, Tom Tugendhat departed the race. It will not have been lost on whoever it is that ends up in Number 10 that the former Army officer was by some distance the most popular amongst the general public, and I will wager we have not heard the last of him or his fresh start campaign. What struck me most was that he was the last white male still standing. I find that interesting because the next PM will now be a woman or a man of Asian origin. So, the nasty Party is teaching the bleeding heart liberals a thing or two about diversity. The Labour Party, all social justice, emancipation and inclusion, has never had a permanent leader that was not a white male. The Liberals from Palmerston onwards, before merging with the SDLP to become the Lib Dems, at least managed Jo Swinson (remember her), although I am not sure how much a five month tenure counts.
Whilst Sir Graham was doing his bit as the 1922 Teller in Chief, Boris was engaging in his typical slapstick in the Chamber. It should not have been slapstick, but there we are, his mind is elsewhere these days even more than it ever was. The Farnborough Airshow rather than a COBRA meeting on the heatwave for example. The slapstick surrounded a vote of no confidence in the Government, which, to stop Labour doing it, was proposed by the Government itself. Boris, of course, used it as a chance to show off, Mr Toad like, at the dispatch box, describing his election performance as having sent a giant blue ferret up Labour’s left trouser leg. All very humorous I suppose, but this was a vote of no confidence in the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Not that the result was ever in doubt. The media did not even take it seriously, and it was mentioned not once on radio and TV stations the following day. Our Parliament has a habit of shooting itself in both feet.
Things continued to go as predicted on Tuesday and it was time for Kemi Badenoch to take her leave. And, no, I had never heard of her until last week either, but she has had, by all accounts, a good campaign and we might expect to see and hear a lot more of here in the months and years ahead. I say as predicted, but this, of course, is a Tory Party leadership contest. One radio pundit hit the nail on the head by observing that Conservative MPs are simultaneously probably the most sophisticated and disingenuous electorate on the planet, and this would not be a Tory Party leadership contest without accusations of jiggery pokery, tactical voting and plans out of the professional edition of the Machiavelli playbook. Numerous observers wondered how Tom’s votes ended up being distributed the way they were, and Kemi’s votes the way they were. Truss was doing better than expected with them and Sunak and Mordaunt worse. The assumption is that votes were being traded to set up a final knock out contest that suits the lead candidate, but as the week has gone on, the lead candidate has become less clear. And whose votes are being traded anyway? It might not be clear cut. The main conspiracy theory was that it was Sunak lending his to Truss because that is who he fancied taking on in the showdown. A contra view was that it was the other way around and Truss wanted to keep Sunak ahead of the field because she thinks there is a clearer differentiation between her and him than there is between her and Mourdant, and she very much backs herself. If either, or indeed both of those are true, which is possible but we will never know, the pair of them got their way. At teatime on Wednesday, Sir Graham donned the black cap for the final time, and Mordaunt, who seems to me as having had a disproportionate amount of negative briefing aimed at her, had to leave.
So, ok, time for me to get off the fence. I had sensed since last weekend that momentum was building behind Truss, and, remember, it is now down to the Tory members. Boris will continue his farewell tour, merch and all, reminding them all how good he has been and how his master plan to make us great again, or whatever it was, has been so unfairly thwarted by Judas in his mist. Yes, that would be Yond Rishi (or re-She as Andrew Mitchell, he of Gategate my favourite gate of all the gates since Nixon, kept saying it the other day) who has a mean and hunger look. For that alone I fear he will pay a heavy price, notwithstanding the fact that the retired, shire dwelling white men who have the greatest say will look at Truss and see Thatcher. Rishi is done. Liz is our next PM. Female Tory PMs 3 the rest 0. Her coronation, though, may be a problem for the Party. If Tom was the favourite on the mean streets of Votersville, Liz was, by equal measure, the least popular choice as our next leader. It will be nothing if not an interesting two years and I think that is how long she will wait to fire the starting gun on Election 2024.
The fortunate amongst you will spend the next six weeks or so at a Villa somewhere with no internet connection and only local TV, whilst the rest of us will be unable to avoid wall to wall coverage of an election only 160,000 card carrying Conservatives can vote in.
That is the summer taken care of then. Speaking of which, how was your heatwave? I got a bit sniffy last week when a scheduled set piece event with various NHS types was pulled because of the forecast. What a country we live in, I grumbled. If it is not too cold it is too hot, if it is not too wet it is too dry, and sometimes, would you believe, it is too windy. All of these things can stop the trains from running. But, Crickey!, was it ever the right decision. I hope you kept cool. I know the dangers of drinking alcohol in such temperatures, but when it is that hot nothing cuts through it quite like a cold Peroni beer. Besides, I was still sulking after Lancs came unstuck in dramatic and controversial fashion in the Blast final. I cannot honestly say that Hampshire were not worthy champions or that we did not make a bit of a mess of it at the death, but I do know now precisely how the New Zealanders felt after that World Cup. Daughter got lucky, however. Year 9 had their residential cancelled and Year 7 missed out on a jolly to Drayton Manor because of the heat, but the Year 8s who have missed every scheduled trip so far were able to wreak havoc amid the rollercoasters in more pleasant sunshine on Wednesday. She has now finished until we find out who the next PM is. And so has the blog. Have a good one and see you again in September.