Robert Jenrick is MHN’s pick for the leadership of the Conservative Party.
James Cleverly is out of the race for Conservative leader, despite being boosted by the support of former MP and Defence Secretary Grant Shapps who was chair of his leadership campaign (archive). Cleverly obtained 37 votes, rivals Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch obtained 41 and 42 respectively. Cleverly doubtless benefited from Tory ‘big beast’ Grant Shapps’ support – it just was not enough. The question is which candidate can now connect with the the party, reconnect with former Conservative voters and appeal to the wider public. MHN says that means a proper strategy with credible policies that appeal to to voters and to Conservative Party members – past, present and future.
Grant Shapps has always been good at picking Conservative leaders. He was one of the signatories to David Cameron’s nomination papers for leadership. My personal opinion is James Cleverly gained more from Shapps’ support than Shapps did from backing him. Of course, Shapps is a canny politician and the support was undoubtedly in part based on the calculation that Cleverly could win and then reward his supporters. He was very close to correct – two or three votes more would have seen Cleverly in the final round. It was very close and Cleverly’s loss of two votes in the final round came as a big surprise to observers.
Grant Shapps, former MP for Welwyn Hatfield and former Defence Secretary. His support has been a large, influential boost to Cleverly’s campaign.
The question is, what comes after the ballots of MPs? It is all very well to be able to predict and count support in the Parliamentary Conservative Party, but after their votes comes the Party members’ vote followed by the most important vote of all – the next general election.
Make no mistake, Labour did not win the last election. Keir Starmer obtained a large majority with fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘disaster’ of 2019. In the 2024 General Election, Starmer’s Labour received 9,708,716 votes. In 2019, Corbyn’s Labour had 10,269,051 votes. The only reason Keir Starmer got a whiff of power was that the Conservative vote split. When the New Labour-ish right regained power in Labour and ousted Corbyn, Tony Blair wrote a triumphant article in the Guardian, “Labour’s task is not to make itself feel better – it’s to win power” (archive). He summarised his message about Corbyn like this,
“The proximate cause of defeat was not complicated or hard to see, but simple and in plain sight. We put forward a leader and a manifesto that voters thought unacceptable to such a degree that many were repelled. Too extreme economically. Anti-western. Lacking in patriotism. And therefore dangerous.”
Tony finished, “These things are obvious. The frustration is that it is necessary to say them”. I haven’t seen Tony Blair for years since I was Labour Party staff in 2005 and as a local staffer I was part of the entourage on a visit he made to Enfield. I felt like responding, “touché”. The reason Corbyn was ever Labour Party leader is the same as the reason Keir Starmer got less votes. New Labour is a far, far more tainted brand than Corbyn’s hard leftism has ever been. That is an objective truth demonstrated by the cold hard numbers from the last election.
MHN editor Sam Smith and (then) newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair a very, very long time ago in 1997.
When I was 18 I was a starry eyed Labour supporter, indeed a party official. What we were promised was a, “Third Way” (archive) between left and right. What we got was something else – a government that mostly cared about image. Not just spin over substance but which presided over a culture in which whistle-blowers and critics were actively terrorised. As a few examples from many, there were the mid-Staffordshire Hospital scandal (archive), the Essex scandal (archive) and of course the Rotherham Scandal (archive). Under Labour, police and local authorities were afraid to acknowledge or tackle the rape of 1,400 children due to a fear of being accused of racism by the government. Aside from that was a great deal of race baiting and laughing with contempt at our members and supporters. There was casual corruption even over trivial issues. The contempt for the supposedly benighted masses ran to the bone. That is Tony’s legacy. That is why Keir Starmer got less votes than Jeremy Corbyn. That is why I cannot envisage ever returning to Labour. That is why all attempts to rehabilitate Blair have failed. To respond to Tony, “The frustration is that it is necessary to say.”
