About the procedure I think the issue is the number of ballots rather than time per se and also the way the ballots reduce the candidates one by one. Also 8 candidates in the first ballot is too much and the threshold to reach the first ballot should have been higher than 20 ballots, perhaps it could have been 10% of total MPs.
Are people really that naïve?
It makes sense given that much of the scandal associated with Boris Johnson arises from the fact he has been short of money when in office and had to contrive various ruses to get his major expenses paid for by wealthy benefactors, presumably for some unspecified favour.
A Prime Ministers salary is a paltry £165,000 a year. Given his complicated personal life with many children to support through various liaisons. A private education in an elite school costs about £50,000 a year.
He stands to make far more money out of office on the corporate speech circuit, where he can cash in the ‘brand’ he has been cultivating while in public office.
Conservatives are quite relaxed about independent wealth. The voting public, not so much. We can see this in some of the exchanges between the competing PM candidates. Few of them have any qualifications for empathising with the poor who are hard hit by the cost of living crisis. They have not had to struggle to pay the bills. Given that a central policy of the Conservatives is to ‘level up’ the poorer, formerly industrial regions of the UK with the more prosperous London and the South East that are home to the service economy. The reasons for this policy are political, they want to hold onto the ‘Red Wall’ seats they took from Labour on the back of Brexit promises.
Can any of these candidates appeal to the voting public that they have a convincing economic answer to the cost of living crisis? I doubt it. The economic prospects for the UK are looking pretty grim. No amount of rhetoric is going to persuade anyone when the winter fuel bills and arrive of the success of ‘leveling up’ initiatives.
But then this leadership election does not involve the General Public. That candidates just have to convince the 350 Conservative MPs and the wider Conservative party. This is a very narrowly defined electorate. Not many of them will have trouble paying their bills, for sure. But they are quite keen on tax cuts.
The other curious thing about this election is that whoever becomes Prime Minister will be employing some of their rivals as government ministers. It is risky to directly attack another candidate. Moreover, failed candidates, can advise their supporters to transfer their votes to one of the remaining candidates. The leading candidates will have campaign teams constantly calling MPs to gauge their support…and offer jobs in cabinet.
Of course the media want a show and so they organised these televised ‘debates’. They serve the purpose of at least introducing the public to some of the lesser known candidates, but little else. This never happened much in the past. Internal party elections for PM were private affairs. We see only to tip of the iceberg.
It does not surprise me that the ‘debates’ have been abandoned. The real electioneering is being done in the tea rooms and bars of Westminster. Only in the last ballot will they be focusing on the wider party members.
These candidates are looking long term. If not this election, then maybe the next. That may include Boris Johnson. He does, after all, model his career on that flawed maverick politician: Churchill who was in and out of power several times and spent a lot his spare time writing his own history. I expect Boris will write a tome of two, lecture the business world on leadership and then try to make a come back.
I hope I am wrong.
Just an FYI: it seems you responded to me without clicking the reply button under my post (the one on the right). As such, I didn’t get a notification of said reply. I only happened to see this because I clicked back into the thread.
As for your statement: what’s the point of this “politicking”? It doesn’t seem like the results are any different than how it would have work with instant run-off. Plus, well, that term is usually used for the deceptive part of the job. I’m not sure why I should see that as a positive that they’re wasting time on these internal political games and not on, well, governing.
And, well, our primaries at least involve giving the people a say. It makes sense to need to have every state vote. We don’t vote multiple times.
They voted Johnson in, and he is in effect a Republican, US born too. He’s very like Trump in the sense of he got power, and didn’t really care much after that apart from riling up people. So it’s the matter of what his government does, and he’s not bothered.
I’m not sure of the status of him giving up the US passport, but I have absolutely no doubt that he could be a candidate for the US president one day. He has the blank slate, huge ego, and hunger for cash which seemed to be attributes of the likes of Bush 2 and Trump.
Polls polls…
I am such a cynic regarding polls so I reckon this can and will only be seen as good news to the Rishi crowd and that he will be the next PM
From the Guardian:
Kemi Badenoch has been eliminated from the Conservative leadership race, setting up a battle between Penny Mordaunt and Liz Truss to join Rishi Sunak in the last round.
Sunak, the former chancellor and the frontrunner, won 118 MPs’ votes, just short of the 120 needed to guarantee a spot in the next stage of the process.
Badenoch, a former levelling up minister, came fourth on 59 votes, exiting the contest to replace Boris Johnson. Mordaunt, an international trade minister, won 92 MPs’ votes, while Truss, the foreign secretary, won 86.
Based on what I’m reading, most people expect Badenoch’s support to swing more toward Truss, potentially spelling doom for Mordaunt, who was only slightly ahead in this vote. So the odds right now seem to be that Sunak and Truss will be the final two.
Which is really astonishing, if you think about it. Both held senior cabinet positions in the Johnson government, which was “overthrown,” resulting in this current vote. You’d think MPs might want at least one candidate who hasn’t been carrying Boris’ tainted water. (Ew.) Doesn’t look that way, though.
The mental gymnastics is must take to be like: “This PM and his gov’t are such a disaster, we have to kick him out, but let’s pick two of his right-hand people to replace him” are very strange to me.
I’m expecting another continuity BNP government, and with Sunak they can still say he “partied while your relatives died”, and at the current going rate they’re both stupid enough to make Johnson a minister, I dunno, minister of Bribery perhaps (is that the Duchy of Lancaster, or was that ministry of Cokehead dancing?). Same government, same mistakes, though Sunak effectively stabbed him in the back didn’t he?
Big movement on the odds tracker with Truss surging to 50% and Mordaunt crashing to 14%.
Incidentally if these latest odds are right, the next PM will be yet another Oxford graduate, the fourth in a row. Oxford’s domination of British PMs since WW2 is quite something ; I am not sure it has a parallel in any other major democracy.
Odds based on what?
How do they assess the factions, loyalties, bribes and intrigues that motivate 350 MPs? If it is by press comment informed by competing campaign teams is hardly reliable.
I don’t think UK cabinet works that way. The PM appoints heavyweights in the party to the cabinet. I think In the US the only cabinet positions a Congressman or Governor would leave his seat for would be State or Defense.
So usually ALL the candidates for PM will have been in the cabinet of the outgoing PM, wouldn’t they?
It’s staggered voting, though. A candidate may have numbers through the roof in California, but if they crash and burn in New Hampshire, Californians never get to cast their votes for that candidate.
It’s not the same electorate, but it is rounds of voting, starting in Iowa and New Hampshire, and then going through the different states on different dates. Part of that process is to test out the candidates and see how they each do on the campaign trail. That’s politicking.
I believe it’s based on betting market odds.
How the bets are being placed, I assume, as with any other betting.
As for how whoever’s betting make their judgements, well, magical thinking is no stranger to this election (nor most others). One doesn’t expect much science to be involved.
The parliamentary party has supported Boris since he won a majority in 2019. The ones who were elected were pro-Boris; the party was purged of the Boris opponents by that election. There aren’t any heavyweights in the current parliamentary party who are free of the Boris taint.
Well, in the current Cabinet, Deb Haaland left Congress to become Secretary of the Interior, Gina Riamondo left the governorship of Rhode Island to become Secretary of Commerce, and Marcia Fudge left Congress to head HUD.
Justice or Treasury would be big draws, too, for the right person.
Yeah, I get that, but Sunak and Truss were both in major positions - essentially “right hand wo/men” to Boris, whereas Mordaunt and Badenoch were much more distant/ancilliary.
Indeed, Boris demoted Mordaunt from her top Defence post - the first woman to hold it, IIRC - after only a few months.
Thanks!
Ew.