Electoral Dysfunction: The Tory leadership hopeful building their support almost entirely hidden from view
For weeks – months even – we’ve been watching a beauty parade on the Conservative benches preparing for life after Rishi Sunak as various MPs hook up with various groupings of Conservative backbenchers hoping to garner support for the moment when the ball comes out of the scrum.
On the right, we have seen the ‘five families‘ of right-wing groupings, led by leadership hopefuls Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick, trying to garner grassroots support by bouncing the prime minister (while Godfather fans will no doubt enjoy the reference to the five leading mafia dynasties of New York City, in the end there was little bloodletting and the prime minister won the day).
Then we have the Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch and Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt on manoeuvres – with briefings from ‘friends’ of the former distancing the cabinet minister from the prime minister’s Rwanda approach, while the latter is hitting the grassroots circuit hard while wooing those new candidates that might end up in the Conservative class of 2024.
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On Electoral Dysfunction this week, Ruth, Jess and I also had a chat about another contender flying below the radar but definitely positioning – Priti Patel. A former darling of the right, she was overtaken amid the demise of Boris Johnson by Ms Braverman, Ms Badenoch and Liz Truss. But now, the former home secretary and key Johnson ally is back, building her base almost entirely hidden from view.
One MP is on manoeuvres to take over the Tory party if they lose the next election. Pic: PA
My ears were first pricked in December when I was talking to a senior figure in the ‘One Nation’ wing of the party – that is home to Tory MPs who are more socially liberal and politically positioned on the centre-right.
As this figure was bemoaning the horrors, as they saw it, of a Braverman leadership bid after the election, they told me that Priti Patel was at least someone on that wing of the party they could do business with. The former cabinet minister acknowledged that the right is likely to take the leadership crown after the election, given the leanings of the Conservative party members who get to choose, and that Patel looks, for now, the pick of an unpalatable bunch for Tory centrists.
Priti Patel is said to be on manoeuvres. Pic: Reuters
And then earlier this month, up Priti Patel popped at the launch of a new grouping – the Popular Conservatives – spearheaded (I know, the irony isn’t missed on me) by Liz Truss.
She is a politician building alliances over all sorts of groupings and even cross-party: when I raised Priti Patel as my dark horse in the likely up-and-coming leadership race, it certainly chimed with Ruth and Jess, with the latter telling us how surprised she’d been when former home secretary Amber Rudd, very much a One Nation Conservative, told her over dinner how she worked well with Priti: “I remember being like, how is this?”
Jess also told me how Patel was with her after MP Sir David Amess was murdered in his constituency: “Those of us who are the highest security risk, of which I am one of ten, they really ramped up our security on these occasions, as they always do in these moments.
“And Priti Patel [who at the time was home secretary] was really good friends with David.
“I mean she was his [constituency] neighbour. And every Sunday night, for four weeks, at about 9pm at night, she would ring me and ask if I was all right. You don’t forget that sort of thing.”
Electoral Dysfunction
Listen to Beth Rigby, Jess Phillips and Ruth Davidson as they unravel the spin in a new weekly podcast from Sky News
It’s particularly pertinent this week as concerns over MPs’ safety come to the fore over the divisive vote around a ceasefire in Gaza. In the week parliament finally backed an immediate ceasefire – a position which has taken Labour months to move to – this significant moment was drowned out by the spectacle of wrangling and rows over parliamentary procedure and partisan point-scoring from which no one emerged well.
The Speaker has had a particularly torrid 24 hours as dozens of MPs called for him to go after Sir Lindsay Hoyle broke decades of parliamentary precedent to allow all three main parties to put their position on a ceasefire to a vote.
The effect was to let Labour off the hook by avoiding a massive rebellion because it meant Starmer’s MPs could vote for the Labour ceasefire amendment instead of having to defy the whip and support the SNP ceasefire motion. But the Speaker was clear his motive was all about MPs’ safety.
There are those in parliament – like Rishi Sunak – who believe strongly concerns over MPs’ safety shouldn’t ever influence business in the Commons, not least because it could set a dangerous precedent of MPs being intimidated in order to change what they debate and how they vote.
But there is also a lot of chatter on some of the female MPs’ WhatsApp groups about their experiences and concerns over threats, with some – particularly Labour women – having to deal with physical confrontations with protests over the Israel-Hamas conflict.
One Conservative MP told me this week she was “riddled with anxiety” ahead of this week’s vote over what to do. “I’m angry that we’re being put in this position,” she told me.
“We get cast as either child murderers or antisemitic and I’m neither. I believe a nation has a right to defend itself against terrorists but I’m also a pacifist.
“There is no nuance in [this] vote, which is totally irrelevant anyway, just a binary perception of whether you’re for or against a ceasefire.”
Read more:
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Starmer denies threatening Speaker
So for all of those MPs angry at Sir Lindsay, there are others who are quietly thankful that he takes their safety so seriously and tried to cushion the fallout of this divisive SNP opposition day.
For now, it looks like he’s staying in post. What I can also confidently say will be a mainstay of this year is MPs’ safety, as we head into what is almost certainly going to be a very nasty election campaign. Something for me, Jess, Ruth to chew over in coming episodes.
Politics
‘Shy’ Reform voters in Labour areas led to Farage’s party winning by-election, Harriet Harman says
“Shy” Reform voters in Labour areas led to Nigel Farage’s party winning the Runcorn by-election by just six votes, Labour peer Harriet Harman said.
The Runcorn and Helsby seat, created in 2024, went to Reform UK’s Sarah Pochin who defeated Labour candidate Karen Shore by six votes.
Reform overturned a 34.8% majority gained by former Labour MP Mike Amesbury last year before he stood down earlier this year after he punched a constituent on a night out.
It is the closest by-election result since records began in 1945.
Read more: Badenoch apologises to Tory councillors
Labour peer and former minister Baroness Harman told Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast: “If we’d have known it was so close, I, myself, would have gone on extra time there and got those six votes.
“So, there’s a real level of frustration and I’m sure there’ll be a post-mortem, but I think there’s a lot of talk about shy Reform voters in Labour areas.”
In the local elections, running at the same time, the Conservatives lost control of all 18 councils it was contesting, with Reform taking eight of those.
The party also won two of the six mayoral contests – Reform’s first two mayors.
Harriet Harman on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast
Baroness Harman said Labour now has “got to get on with delivering on the health service” and pointed out the minimum wage increase and breakfast clubs are only just being rolled out.
But she said the government also needs “more of a story” instead of just telling people to “bear with us” while it fixes what the Conservatives did.
“It seems to be that Farage has got no delivery, as yet, and all the story, whereas the government is really getting on with delivery, but it hasn’t got a big enough story about what that fits,” she said.
Read more: Reform’s political earthquake is now shaking our political system
An installation represents a bus stop during Reform UK’s local elections campaign launch in Birmingham. Pic: Reuters
She added that “Blue Labour” MPs – a socially Conservative wing of the Labour Party – “will be emboldened to press for further action” on issues like immigration, which they want to see a tougher stance on.
“There’s been grumbling about the big salience of the concerns of the winter fuel payment, but I don’t see there being any change on that,” she said.
Baroness Harman said she does not think the by-election and local election results were “utterly predictable” and will not lead to any splits or instability within the party.
Kemi Badenoch has apologised to Tory councillors who lost their seats after Reform made massive gains at the Conservatives’ expense in Thursday’s local elections.
The Conservative leader said she knew it was “disappointing” and that she was “sincerely sorry”, but added: “We are going to win those seats back – that is my job now.”
The Tories lost overall control of all 18 councils they had been in charge of that were up for election. There were 23 councils in the race in total.
Politics latest: Sky News analysis shows Reform surge in estimated national vote
A particularly bad loss was Buckinghamshire, which has been under Tory control since 1973 when local government was reorganised. The Conservatives lost overall control by just one seat after losing 29 seats.
Reform, which has never run in local elections before, gained eight councils from the Tories, one that had no overall control previously and one from Labour – the only Labour council up for grabs in this election.
Nigel Farage with the new Runcorn and Helsby MP Sarah Pochin. Pic: Reuters
The Lib Dems won Shropshire from the Tories, as well as Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire – both of which had no overall control before.
The Conservatives had one win, with Paul Bristow being voted in as Cambridgeshire and Peterborough mayor, previously held by Labour.
Reform’s first major win of the election was the Runcorn and Helsby by-election where Labour lost to Reform by six votes. It was triggered by ex-Labour MP Mike Amesbury resigning after his conviction for punching a constituent.
Sir Keir Starmer said he “gets” why his party suffered defeat there and the results show “we must deliver that change ever more quickly, we must go even further”.
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Tories suffer heavy defeats
Addressing the Conservatives’ abysmal results, Ms Badenoch said: “Other parties may be winning now, but we are going to show that we can deliver and that we are on course and recovering.
“But they [the public] are still not yet ready to trust us,” she added.
“We have a big job to do to rebuild trust with the public.
“That’s the job that the Conservative Party has given me, and I’m going to make sure that we get ourselves back to the place where we are seen as being a credible alternative to Labour.”
Read more:
Reform’s political earthquake is now shaking our political system
Reform wins two new mayoral contests
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Farage: ‘This is Reform-quake’
Ms Badenoch said Labour’s election results showed Sir Keir Starmer “is on course to be a one-term prime minister”.
However, when asked if she would still be leader at the next general election, Ms Badenoch dodged the question and said: “I’m not playing all these questions that the media loves to ask about my future.
“This is not about me.”
She insisted she was the right person to lead the Conservatives, as she was chosen by the party’s members.
“I told them it wouldn’t be easy, I told them it would require a renewal and rebuilding of our party,” she said.
“That doesn’t happen in six months. I’m trying to do something that no one has ever done before, which is take their party from such a historic defeat back into government in one term.”
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