Alas, this ain’t the Tory Party Leadership race …

 

Yon ‘killer heatwave’ seems to’ve been suspended for the time being. Instead, the MSM are serving up the political ‘heatwave’ that is the Tory Leadership contest which is certainly hotting up. Their overarching ‘theme’ today is: get rid of Mordaunt. This comes in various flavours, as a quick scan of the printed front pages shows (link). Of course, the lefty paper ‘The Mirror’ disdains this contest, so they went with a ‘heatwave hell’ frontpage, as did The Sun. After all, Red Top readers aren’t really interested in politics, are they … or so the chief editors of said papers seem to think.

Here’s another interesting snippet, demonstrating to me that the Westminster editors are in cahoots. The result of yesterday’s round which was lost by Ms Braverman is now reported with a nice graph, with tasteful blue bars. The Guardian set the tone in their report published yesterday afternoon right after the vote (link). In true MSM fashion this was then copied across the board. Ah well – all those ‘graph editors’ who were so busy during the covid years must be given something to do so they won’t lose their skills. 

Briefly, the numbers are: Sunak (101 votes), Mordaunt (83), Truss (64), Badenoch (49) and Tugendhat (32). Ms Braverman told her supporters to get behind Truss which ‘disappointed’ Ms Badenoch (link). Well, that’s politics, innit – and it shouldn’t have been surprising because Lord Frost himself has now waded in. He’s a Truss supporter and one doesn’t need to be an ‘expert’ in political forecasting to assume that he told Ms B to do the right thing, ‘en coulisse’ obviously. After all, Ms B was on his Brexit team. From the DT’s ‘report on Lord Frost’s article’, see this:

“Lord Frost has urged Kemi Badenoch to withdraw from the Tory leadership race and back Liz Truss as calls grow for the Right of the party to unite around one candidate. […] Mrs Badenoch’s spokesman on Thursday night said she had “no intention of stepping down”. (paywalled link)

So far – so tame. The truly raw-red-meat, blood-dripping piece is Lord Frost’s article though, with a hammer that is the subtitle: “It would not be possible for me to serve under Penny Mordaunt. I don’t believe a government led by her could succeed” (paywalled link). Blimey – that’s not exactly the language of a diplomat! We can infer immediately that Lord Frost is planning to get back into Cabinet, especially under La Liz. Next:

“First, I cannot support Penny Mordaunt. My direct experience of working with her, as my notional deputy on EU issues in 2021, was that she was absent on parade. She did not master the detail in the negotiations, she shied away from delivering tough messages to the EU, and she wasn’t fully accountable for decisions or even always visible. After six months of this, I had to ask the Prime Minister to move her on and find someone else to support me […]” (paywalled link)

Ouch! That’s piling on the pain, that is. Lord Frost goes on to set out reasons for ‘vote Liz’ after giving his praise to Ms Badenoch and brushing Sunak off as ‘Johnson continuity’ candidate. However, his next quote demonstrates that this contest has now become a plain ‘gimme your supporters’ votes and I’ll give you a cabinet post’ barter: “I urge Kemi to stand down in return for a serious job in a Truss administration.” (paywalled link).

Yep – that’s the smoking gun right there: haggling for posts is what this ‘race’ is about. That’s also why Lord Frost’s glowing praise for Miz T. reads like another job application. Meanwhile, on the theme of ‘Johnson continuity candidate’, Katy Balls, in the Speccie’s email newsletter, writes: “While Truss promised a change in economic policy, it was clear from the session that she is the Boris Johnson continuity candidate.” Two ‘continuity candidates’? Oh dear!

Meanwhile, the current PM has thrown his bulky weight against one of the candidates, according to the ‘sources’ who were gossiping to The Times:

“Boris Johnson is urging defeated Tory leadership candidates to back “anyone but Rishi”, […] The prime minister has said he will not endorse any leadership candidates or publicly intervene in the contest. He is understood, however, to have held conversations with failed contenders to succeed him in which he made clear his view that Sunak should not become prime minister. A source close to one of the conversations said that Johnson appeared most keen on Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, who has been endorsed by his fiercest cabinet allies, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries.” (link, paywalled)

That looks to me as if Miz T has played her cards exceedingly well and that we may well see a rush to get her on the two-candidate ballot going out to party members, not least because there’s a demolition job on Mordaunt in the DM (link). Of course, we should always hear the other side, so here it is. Under the headline “Penny Mordaunt ally decries ‘black ops’ campaign” we read:

“Penny Mordaunt’s supporters have accused Liz Truss’s campaign of “black ops” amid claims that Downing Street prevented her from chairing a key cabinet committee because she was “not up to the job”. (link, paywalled)

‘Tis the political equivalent of ‘meow’, claws out, with scratching and hair-pulling. Not a good look for female candidates, is it! To round it up, the DT’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has penned a piece where he explains why he’s against Sunak. For me, the key phrase is in the first sentence – not that AEP regards this as a ‘bad thing’: “Rishi Sunak is the candidate of the global financial markets. That is a valuable asset.” (paywalled link). AEP is ‘against Sunak’ because of his stance on tax cuts and ‘austerity’, as is Sir John Redwood, in a more roundabout way – see his diary entries on that issue (link).

It wouldn’t surprise me if the ‘bottom candidates’, Badenoch and Tugendhat, were to throw in the towel even before the weekend. Today they all have the opportunity to address Tory Party members in a zoom event set up by ConHome (link). It remains to be seen if such important points as Net Zero and all that green crap will be addressed, never mind pointing out that Sunak and Truss share responsibility for the mess we’re in.

I feel obliged to give fair warning to La Liz whose undying support for Mr ‘e is well documented. In the last few days the unsurpassed ‘iEarlGrey’ has pointed out the phenomenon of the ‘Zelenski Curse’ (e.g. here, and yesterday here) which strikes the political leaders of nations who’ve been cosseting Mr ‘e. BJ was of course the first to be thus stricken. The latest curse victim is Mario Draghi, Italy’s PM, who has tended his resignation (link). You’d better be careful, Liz, hadn’t you!

All I’ll say at this stage is that inconvenient truths have now been mentioned openly. This race is a sham race: it’s about barter and haggling, about who can get ‘a prize’ at the cabinet table. Important issues? Forget it. Lip service only will be paid to Brexit, taxation, Net Zero. It’ll be between Sunak and Truss, so it’s all over bar the shouting, bar the ‘entertainment’ for the MSM. 

Meanwhile we can have fun watching the cat fights and the mud slung about by those candidates. Personally  I think the famous bog snorkelling race in Wales will be vastly more entertaining.

 

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(Photo Credit: wikimedia commons)

 

 

 

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