Quite soon we will know the results of the first ballot
Guardian coverage of the vote here.
Their lead pinned article at the moment is " Mordaunt would easily beat all other candidates in final ballot of members, YouGov poll suggests"
Penny Mordaunt would beat all other candidates in the Tory leadership contest in the final ballot of member - very easily, a YouGov poll for the Times suggests. Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, would prove the strongest opponent. But Mordaunt, an international trade minister, would beat her by 55% to 37%, the poll suggests. She would beat Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor, by 67% to 28%, the poll suggests.
And I’m wrong about the no-chancers.
Former Chancellor Rishi Sunak has secured the most votes from Tory MPs after the first round of voting.
From the BBC:
The remaining candidates left in the leadership contest are:
- Kemi Badenoch - 40 votes
- Suella Braverman - 32 votes
- Penny Mordaunt - 67 votes
- Rishi Sunak - 88 votes
- Liz Truss - 50 votes
- Tom Tugendhat - 37 votes
As it happened: Nadhim Zahawi and Jeremy Hunt out as Rishi Sunak tops first round of Tory contest - BBC News
I would have thought that Kemi Badenoch and Suella Braverman hadn’t done nearly enough in Parliament to build a base of support.
So that roughly breaks down into two tiers (though Truss is kind of in the middle):
Sunak - 88
Mordaunt - 67
Truss - 50 (I put her in this upper tier due to name recognition)
Badenoch - 40
Tugendhat - 37
Braverman - 32
Is the writing already on the wall for the lower tier folks? Do any of them have a chance to move up significantly by snagging supporters of the two ousted candidates (Hunt and Zahawi)?
I’ve been reading some hilarious commentary from John Crace of the Guardian UK about the various candidates. Some gems:
On Liz Truss:
Meanwhile, Liz Truss’s campaign was being derailed even before it had formally started. Liz fancies herself as the new voice of change. Quite why is anyone’s guess. Then she is entitled to be delusional.
She’s never knowingly had an original thought. Which is why she is the natural person to be the Boris continuity candidate. But even she recoiled when Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg endorsed her. The backing nobody wanted.
On Kemi Badenoch:
The third launch was the eccentric Kemi Badenoch. Her pitch was that everyone should be allowed to do pretty much as they pleased. Why bother with a police force when people can just go and shoot criminals themselves? And hospitals were just for wishy-washy liberals. Things were much better when people with cancer just shut up and died.
In an ideal world she would burn down the entire country and start again. Her biggest bugbear was the woke warriors. What was wrong with bullying in the workplace and the odd racist joke? Predictably she went down a storm.
On Tom Tugendhat:
Tugendhat has one distinct advantage over all the other leadership contenders. He’s never been in government – indeed he’s often sounded more like the opposition – and is not contaminated by sleaze, incompetence and failure.
Unfortunately, this might not be a positive for Tory MPs who tend only to trust other people’s lies.
On Rishi Sunak:
Then Rish! went for the party loyalist pitch. Boris Johnson had been a great, great leader. So great that Sunak could no longer remember why he had plotted to get rid of The Convict.
It had just been a coincidence that the Ready4Rish! website had been registered back in December. Yes, he had written a resignation letter but that had been just for fun. There were no serious points of disagreement over the direction of government. That had just been a slip of the tongue.
Yes, Boris was a flawed individual, Sunak went on. But then so was everyone. Even him. Hell, which one of us hadn’t lied to everyone we met, had cheated on every woman with whom he had had a relationship and broken every law in sight. Just traditional Tory values.
On Penny Mordaunt:
Mordaunt’s eyes welled up as she stared into the middle distance and nodded slowly and deliberately several times after every sentence. As if to make it clear she agreed with herself. And was profoundly moved by what she was saying. You can imagine her practising her self-affirmations in the mirror every morning. “Who’s the best? You’re the best. Who’s the next prime minister? ME, ME, ME. PM4PM!”
It might have worked for Penny, but not for me. I could feel myself dozing off in the heat. Along with almost everyone else packed into the room.
Sad. Just shows I was right about calling Boris “trump-lite”.
The rest are pretty fumy, thanks.
There’s a good reason so many people threw their hats into the ring …
Speaking of which …
Knowing nothing of the politics and just speaking to math …
The two who were eliminated had at most 31 votes each. That’s mathematically certain, or they would not have been eliminated; somebody else would have been. More plausibly on statistical grounds they’d have a bunch less, something like 20 and 10.
Meaning there’s only 30 to at most 62 more votes to distribute. Yes, if it was the larger number and they all went to the trailer Braverman, Braverman would be in first place by a nose. That’s stunningly implausible statistically.
From a more political perspective I expect to see the vote for the trailing three collapse as the voters try to back the winner apparent to ingratiate themselves to him/her. “Secret” ballots aren’t secret at that level of politics. And I’m not sure they’ve even meant to be secret ballots.
The question is more, which of those still in is now going to do a deal to back a front-runner? As in (AIUI) US primaries, but in a very truncated timeframe.
The amount of time US political parties spend on electing a leader seems extremely long.
The UK Conservative party has 350 MPs and about 350,000 party members (average age is about 57). The MPs already know the politics of the candidates. A lot of the campaigning will be face to face in the tea rooms and bars of Westminster.
The final ballot to decided between the last two will involve lots of visits by the candidates to local Conservative associations up and down the country. It will be fast paced.
Even General Elections in the UK are really quite fast, all over in a matter of weeks.
Are you suggesting that someone is going to bow out and back someone else before today’s ballot?
Well, the results of the 2nd round ballot are about to be announced, so it hasn’t happened yet
Suella Braverman is OUT, thank God. The latest ballot:
- Rishi Sunak - 101 votes
- Penny Mordaunt - 83 votes
- Liz Truss - 64 votes
- Kemi Badenoch - 49 votes
- Tom Tugendhat - 32 votes
A lot of votes in the bottom two that could really change things.
Interesting.
Do any non-Tories ever pay five pounds or some other nominal amount to join the Conservative Party just to play a role in (or mess with) leadership elections?
It’s not currently clear. I listened to a podcast from two noteworthy political commentators (including one ex Tory leadership candidate*), and they were discussing whether the Tory Party will tighten the rules to avoid people joining to mess with the result.
*The Rest is Politics, if anyone is interested. Rory Stewart (ex Tory Minister), and Alistair Campbell (ex press secretary for Labour under Tony Blair). They’re both excellent sparring partners, opposite sides of the fence but both pretty centrist.
Interesting to note only one white male left in the race, and he’s bottom.
Does that mean Non-Dom?
<rimshot>!! 
Not necessarily immediately, but at some point, those nearer the bottom of each round may see more advantage in (partial) king-making than fighting a losing battle.
I know nothing about her - why is/was she horrible?
The one that sounds really bad to me (from my very limited understanding from across the pond) is Kemi Badenoch.