There are a couple of odd things to note about the Conservative leadership contest, that will finally kick off in earnest at 7pm tonight, after weeks (or indeed months) of speculation.
The first is how long it has actually taken to get the rules hammered out. That the Tories would need a new leader after Rishi Sunak inevitably lost the election is hardly news. So why has it taken almost three weeks since election day to get it all sorted?
In short, it’s all been a bit of scramble. The election of Bob Blackman as the new chair of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, who sets the rules, was itself mired in controversy and bitterness, with confusion over the timing and some MPs turning up too late to vote. Then last week a meeting between the 1922 Committee and the Conservative Party Board to thrash out the details lasted over five hours and came to no conclusions. When the decisions was finally made last night, it was immediately leaked to journalists before it was officially announced to the party.
As for the details themselves, the main takeaway is “go long”. Very long, in fact. The winner won’t be revealed until 2 November, almost four months after the election.
Candidates have until 2.30pm on Monday to get their nominations in and will need the backing of at least ten MPs each. (With 121 Conservative MPs in total, that means a maximum of 11 making it through.) There will then be a break for the summer, while the contenders tour the country participating in hustings and making their case, but without any actual votes. The elimination stage won’t begin until parliament returns in September, with four MP voting rounds in quick succession. The four remaining candidates will each get prominent speaking slots at the party’s conference in Birmingham in October, after which MPs will again whittle them down until just two remain. Only then do members get a vote, with 90 days for them to get their ballots in. The result will be announced on 2 November.
You can sort of see how they got there. After a defeat this bad, the party is in tatters. It lost votes in every party of the country, in every demographic, of every political persuasion. MPs and Conservative commentators from across the party’s “broad church” ideological spectrum all agree that some serious thinking needs to be done. Rushing the decision of who begins the long, gruelling task of rebuilding before there’s been a chance to fully reflect on what went wrong would be disaster. Conservative members know that – in a poll for ConservativeHome the vast majority backed a contest lasting at least until party conference. There is general unease at the memory of the summer 2022 contest to replace Boris Johnson, in which the final two were selected by MPs within 13 days. Many in the party believe the disasters that followed – the brief Liz Truss era and the emergency coronation of Rishi Sunak – could have been avoided if a bit more care had been taken before the membership voting stage (current frontrunner Kemi Badenoch, for example, was forecast to beat both Sunak and Truss in a head-to-head had she made it to the final two).
But while strands of logic are apparent, there are some glaring pitfalls with the way the contest is due to be run. For a start, long contests cost money – and the Conservative party doesn’t have any. The Times reports that the party is losing £1m a month. Donations dried up during the election campaign, and while a long leadership contest might be beneficial in ensuring the right person gets the job, donors are refusing to open their pockets until it’s clear who the new leader will be. It’s a case, one party insider told me, of needing the money to make sure the right leader is selected, while at the same time needing the right leader in place to access the money.
The longer timetable also means Sunak will stay in post for months longer than expected. That’s fine before parliament rises for the summer break (he will face Keir Starmer just once before recess in the first reversed PMQs tomorrow), but will start to look a bit strange when MPs come back in September and the work of challenging the new government still falls to the man responsible for losing the election. It’s been fairly easy so far for Labour ministers to bat away opposition by simply pointing out that it’s coming from the very people responsible for the mess in the first place. Once Rachel Reeves starts making tough financial decisions and Starmer starts disappointing people, the Tories may regret the absence of a leader who can act as a robust attack dog.
Mostly, though, the weirdness is in the tension between MPs’ influence and the membership. For while the contenders will get plenty of time to pitch themselves to the membership, touring the country in August and – if they’re in the final four – parading “beauty pageant” style at the conference in Birmingham, members will still be stuck with whichever final two MPs choose. This is supposedly a contest about bringing the fractured party back together. Can you imagine the outrage if one candidate wins hearts and minds in Birmingham, only to be weeded out by MPs the following week? There seems a high risk of ending up with a “this is what you could have won” scenario that antagonises members just when the party needs them to rally.
Two final thoughts on how this could play out. First, much has been made of the fact that longer contests are a risk to the frontrunner – in this case, Badenoch. Is this about giving her time to trip up and provide space for an insurgent challenger to come through from behind, as David Cameron did in 2005? It’s possible. Although so far the candidate most likely to blow up in a longer timeframe would seem to be Suella Braverman, who is attempting increasingly desperate antics in order to stay relevant, and may even end up defecting to Reform before the race is over (although I wouldn’t count on it – there isn’t room for more than one star in Nigel Farage’s enterprise).
Second, in choosing this timetable Blackman and the party board have managed to end up with the result announced three days before the US election, probably the biggest news story in the world this year. Perhaps that can’t be helped, but it does seem unfortunate. As the Tories are about to find out, being in opposition means for the most part being ignored. The new leader will have relatively few opportunities to seize the news cycle and make their own political weather. One of those – party conference – they’ll have to share with three other rivals. Another – being winning the contest – will happen while the eyes of pretty much everyone in the UK with even a vague interest in politics will be firmly fixed across the Atlantic to see if Donald Trump wins a second term. Talk about being overshadowed.
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