Blood Sports

Ben Wildsmith

The Tories have never been averse to bloodsports, whether in the field or the corridors of parliament. Every few years, we are treated to their tearing each other apart over the leadership, only unite behind the victor and flash those glassy smiles that speak of unending power and privilege.

Only in recent times have their contests created genuine rifts that can’t be bridged by the offer of a shadow cabinet post here and there.

Liz Truss’s long ride on the barmycycle has carried her beyond the boundaries of acceptability even for a party that continues to murmur approvingly at Boris Johnson. That said, would her path have been so precipitous if she’d been carrying an ancient title in her paniers?

The sheer brutality of Tory leadership elections is rooted in the enviable personal agency enjoyed by those contesting them.

Conservative political careers end differently from those pursued in the Labour movement or nationalist politics. Whilst fewer of them can actually return to their Scottish estates nowadays, plenty find agreeable post-political positions that mean risking everything on a political gamble doesn’t carry much personal jeopardy at all.

As the joke goes, the editor of the Evening Standard, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, a dean’s fellow at Stanford, an advisor at Blackrock, the chairman of 9Yards investment, an investment banker at Robey Warshaw, the chairman of the British Museum, the host of Political Currency, and a managing director at OpenAI walk into a bar.

‘What can I get you, Mr Osborne?’ the barman asks.

‘That’s the Right Honourable George Osborne CH, to you, heir apparent to the Baronetcy of Ballintaylor and Ballylemon. I’ll have a pint of Madri and a Lambrini for the missus, please.’

Privilege

Politics, at that end of society, is merely an ‘of course, when I was Chancellor of the Exchequer’ element of the kind of varied, fulfilling life that privilege secures. It can be sloughed off as a lark in favour of City trading, something in the arts, or whatever takes your fancy if you have options and connections.

Not so for the frantically ambitious, monomaniacal weirdos who elbow themselves to the top of other political parties. I mean, what on earth would you do with someone like Wes Streeting if he were ejected from political life? He doesn’t do politics, he is politics.

To reach positions like his without privilege requires unnatural levels of focus and discipline. So, protecting that perch becomes an end in itself for career politicians and that can create an atmosphere of frozen inaction such as that we see in the parliamentary Labour Party this week.

Keir Starmer was a goner even before Peter Mandelson’s potentially criminal activities came to light. The only factor keeping him in Number 10 was nervy uncertainty on the part of potential assassins as to when was the right time to strike.

Regicide

However the regicide pans out now, the self-interested dithering that has paralysed the government for months means that the eventual successor will lack the air of decisiveness that the UK so desperately needs.

They will be neither feared nor loved and that is a recipe for yet more managerial tinkering in the face of endemic decline.

Meanwhile, the Tories Mk II have cheerfully inherited a relaxed attitude to stuffing each other royally from their slightly darker blue forebears.

Much has rightly been made this week about the residency of Reform UK’s new Welsh leader. Dan Thomas hasn’t been a Tory since (checks notes) June but has bravely moved as close to Wales as Bath in order to sniff out our political priorities as they waft over the Severn Bridge and turn right after Bristol.

Why he should be so coy about where he’s actually living is anyone’s guess but let’s spare a thought for the poor mooks this newcomer has leapfrogged to become Nige’s new ‘Welsh Dave’.

Nylon socks

Like them or loathe them, Reform’s Welsh activists have worked their nylon socks off for Farage, seemingly in the genuine belief that Reform will lift us all out of poverty into a 30mph paradise of monocultural union jackery.

So, for none of them to be considered for the Welsh leadership, and to have to suffer the indignity of a man from the east coming to steal their job, must be a bitter pill indeed.

You can surmise that Farage doesn’t care at all whether his local party activists remain loyal or not. His plan is not to build support and eventually govern Wales but to use the party’s Senedd presence to generate headlines and create chaos.

How they treat each other is a sure guide to how they will treat us, given the chance.