When the chips are down, the Tories know how to flog a stalking horse
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Congrats to Vladimir Putin on his landslide re-election: exit polls suggest he won 96 per cent of voters who said they didn’t want to go to prison. By contrast, UK polling puts the Tories nationally on just two per cent – behind Monster Raving and Cornish Independence – triggering a whisper campaign that says Rishi might be replaced.
It’s when the chips are down that the Tory Party becomes most Tory. Ben Wallace took to the airwaves to tell MPs to “march to the sound of the guns”, evoking the pointless massacres of the First World War that make one so proud to be British.
Kemi Badenoch was sent on a charm offensive to various outlets, deploying her special skill of speaking slowly and clearly so that even the idiot interviewer can grasp what she’s saying. The leadership speculation, she told an obvious simpleton, is driven by a “small minority of MPs”. Don’t knock it, Kemi: after the election, all Tories are going to be a small minority of MPs – and it was time for these morons to “stop it”.
At a beauty parlour in Portsmouth, Penny Mordaunt threw a copy of Take A Break at the TV screen. “Who,” she bellowed from beneath the hairdryer, “is telling the media that I want to run?!”
The Penny for PM phenomenon is a mystery. Her popularity among members, not so much. Labour is motivated by ideas, the Tories entirely by sex – and Penny is a very attractive naval reservist who took part in a televised diving contest and waved a big sword around at the Coronation. She also tells dirty jokes in the Commons. As you can imagine, the Conservative Party’s core demographics of retired admirals and closeted gay men can’t get enough.
Brains as well as beauty
But Penny has brains as well as beauty and must have figured out that to become leader of the Tory Party at this point in history is a suicide mission. You’ll lose the general election, take the blame and be even more mocked than Liz Truss. It’s the least appealing promotion offer since Karl Doenitz received a telegram from the Führerbunker in 1945 informing him of an “exciting opportunity for career advancement”.
Knowing this, her allies are messaging journalists to say, “It’s nothing to do with Penny!” So, who is behind it?
Michael Gove. Or so some think. By pushing Penny, the Govester damages Sunak while also hurting Penny – because she looks disloyal – guaranteeing the post-election leadership for his girl, Kemi. The theory might be true; it might be nonsense, the product of a party looking for enemies within because it has given up on beating the enemies without. Tories see Gove’s fingers on every plot and crisis they face. He’s Russia in human form.
As for Rishi, he popped up on TV to extol the plan – “the plan... the plan... the plan...” – then met Barack Obama at No 10, his presence greeted in Westminster by the kind of excitement usually reserved for Jesus Christ. No doubt some MPs are reading the Tory rulebook to see if they can install him as leader. Alas, even Obama couldn’t raise this party from the dead.
