Nick Timothy, who was Prime Minister Theresa May’s joint chief of staff for almost a year before the 2017 general election and was one of the most powerful people in the government, was last night replaced by Tom Tugendhat. – Announced that he would be replaced by Mr Jenrick.
I supported Tom Tugendhat as leader of the Conservative Party until he was knocked out today. I’m voting for Rob Jenrick tomorrow.
Our party needs to analyze why we lost and what we must do next. Rob has shown a willingness to do that and I fully support him.
— Rep. Nick Timothy (@NJ_Timothy) October 8, 2024
I supported Tom Tugendhat as leader of the Conservative Party until he was knocked out today. I’m voting for Rob Jenrick tomorrow.
Our party needs to analyze why we lost and what we must do next. Rob has shown a willingness to do that and I fully support him.
And Caroline Dinenage last night declared her support for James Cleverley.
After carefully observing the development of leadership campaigns, I have concluded that: @JamesCleverly He is the right person to rebuild our party.
He has a wealth of experience and the ability to unite us and restore trust not only with words but also with actions.
He gets my vote ✅ pic.twitter.com/uGzELP9P6I
— Caroline Dinenage MP (@cj_dinenage) October 8, 2024
After carefully observing the development of leadership campaigns, I have concluded that: @JamesCleverly He is the right person to rebuild our party.
He has a wealth of experience and the ability to unite us and restore trust not only with words but also with actions.
he gets my vote
share
Iain Duncan Smith supports Mr Badenoch as Conservative Party leadership candidate
Kemi Badenoch received useful support this morning. Former party leader Iain Duncan-Smith posted a message on social media this morning saying he supported her because of her ability to face “the hard truths from that terrible election result”. he said:
Today is the last parliamentary round to decide the final two candidates, so I think it’s right to say who we hope will be the next party leader. @conservative party.
That person must be able to return the party to its core values and core beliefs. Who will recognize…
— Iain Duncan Smith MP Chingford & Woodford Green (@MPIainDS) October 9, 2024
Today is the last parliamentary round to decide the final two candidates, so I think it’s fair to say who we hope will be the next leader of the Conservative Party.
That person must be able to return the party to its core values and core beliefs. Who can understand why millions of Conservative voters left us in July, feeling that the party in government was no longer behaving like the party they overwhelmingly voted for in 2019?
Someone who doesn’t reach for the default comfort blanket of past performance and has the humility to face the hard truth from that awful election result and learn from it and the strength to do something about it.
Above all, someone who is not just the right person for today, but someone who will grow with the party over the next five years so that by 2029 voters can see what the Conservative Party has achieved. It has completed a journey of repair, providing a real alternative to this dysfunctional Labor government and becoming fit to govern once again.
I believe that person is @KemiBadenoch and I’m voting for her today.
The line about not reaching for the “default comfort blanket of past achievements” says the most about what the Conservatives have achieved during their time in government, and perhaps the least about how they should change going forward. It’s a clear attack on James Cleverley, who has said little.
share
Mr Jenrick suggests he is the victim of ‘horse-trading’ as MPs prepare to choose their final two leadership candidates in a parliamentary vote
good morning. Keir Starmer will face PMQs today for the first time since the conference season adjournment and the reshuffling of his number 10 position, which effectively saw chief of staff Sue Gray sacked. But there may be more interest in what Bob Blackmun, chairman of the Conservative Party 1922 Committee, says when he announces the names of the two Conservative leadership candidates heading to the polls at 3.30pm. .
One of them is believed to be James Cleverley with 99.999% probability. The other would be either Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick. Both candidates are from the Conservative right, but Mr Badenoch is a right-wing man with lifelong convictions and is very popular with Tory MPs, while Mr Jenrick was elected to parliament as a Cameroonian modernist. He has said that his experiences in the war led him to become radicalized in favor of leaving the ECHR. The Home Office cannot control irregular immigration.
In the run up to the Conservative Party conference, Jenrick was the clear favorite of the bookmakers. But today, he is the candidate with the most trouble.
Mr Jenrick was just one vote behind Mr Badenoch yesterday, but no one is confident in predicting what will happen today. That’s because Conservative MPs aren’t just voting on who they want to be their leader. They decide who they want the final two to be (keeping in mind who they want to be the leader) and who they don’t want to be in the final two (supporting their favorite (because it’s often more important to block candidates you don’t like). ).
In a last-ditch attempt to win extra votes, Mr Jenrick gave an interview to Kay Burley on Sky News this morning. (Badenoch’s team probably decided that the best thing for her campaign would be to keep her away from the media.) (I often find it difficult to get through an interview without patronizingly arguing with the presenter in a reinforcing way.) Burley asked Jenrick why Cleverley was so good yesterday. Asked if he had made the grade, Jenrick suggested he was the victim of “horse trading” by MPs swapping votes to keep him out, replying: “No.
There is always horse trading in the final stages….
I’ve been around for a long time, and I know that in the last few votes of these leadership contests, there’s always a movement of people around votes and stuff.
Asked by Mr Burley if he was implying that the Badenoch campaign was lending votes to Mr Cleverley to remove him from the shortlist, Mr Jenrick said: “I don’t know.”
Neither do we, and we probably never will. Such voting does involve strategic vote swapping, but people rarely acknowledge it and it can be dangerous. In other cases, a leading candidate’s campaign manager actively urges a small number of supporters to vote for a weaker opponent; other times, only freelance members are involved. be. Around half of Conservative MPs do not publicly say who they support, and some may even keep this information secret from their colleagues.
But if vote switching were to occur today, Jenrick would be more likely to be the beneficiary than the victim. The latest poll of Conservative members suggests Mr Badenoch will beat Mr Cleverley in the final vote, but Mr Jenrick won’t, so the Cleverley team (which theoretically has a split vote) suggests Mr Badenoch will beat Mr Cleverley in the final vote. The only team that has one has an incentive to push Jenrick over the line.
Mr Jenrick also claimed in the interview that he intends to bring the Conservative Party back to the “common ground” of British politics. It’s a centrist pitch aimed at appealing to the 20 Conservative MPs who voted for Tom Tugendhat, who lost the election yesterday. Jenrick said:
In this leadership contest over the last few months, I am the only candidate who has set out concrete, clear policies to tackle the big issues facing our country, including the NHS, how to grow the economy and how to tackle immigration. I think so. , please secure the borders
Because I think it’s really important that the Conservative Party gets back to the common ground of British politics and works on the things that people really care about.
And polls suggest that of the candidates I am in the best position to win back the millions of votes lost to the reformers and the millions lost to the left-wing Liberal Democrats. There is.
If we don’t, our party has no future and will be stuck in the political wilderness for years to come.
Therefore, the party now needs someone who is professional, competent and focused on the most salient issues, the things that the audience really cares about. That’s me. That’s what I want to do in the Conservative Party.
The agenda for the day is:
11.30am: Bridget Phillipson takes questions in the House of Commons in her capacity as Minister for Women and Equalities.
Midday: Keir Starmer takes on Rishi Sunak at PMQs.
Just after 12.30pm: Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary Angela Rayner holds second reading of the Tenancy Rights Bill.
1:30 p.m.: Conservative MPs begin voting in the final parliamentary vote for the Conservative leadership.
3.30pm: 1922 Committee Chairman Bob Blackmun announces the results of the Conservative leadership vote.
Foreign Secretary David Lamy has also traveled to the Middle East, visiting Bahrain and Jordan.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line (BTL) or message me on social media. I can’t read every message on BTL, but if you include “Andrew” in your message, I’ll search for posts containing that word, so it’s more likely to show up.
If you want to make an urgent report, social media is the best place to go. I’m still using X, but the one addressed to @AndrewSparrow will appear soon. I’ve also tried Bluesky (@andrewsparrowgdn) and Threads (@andrewsparrowtheguardian).
It helps a lot when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos (no mistakes are too small to be corrected). And I think your question is also very interesting. I can’t promise to reply to everything, but I’ll try to reply as much as I can, either on BTL or occasionally on my blog.
share
Updated on 04.55 EDT
