How many prime ministers does it take to destroy a party?

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Is anything more fun than watching a political party you despise come apart in slow motion? This isn’t innocent fun, I admit, because the Conservative Party’s woes risk tearing the country apart as well, but as long as it’s happening I see no reason not to enjoy the spectacle. 

What’s going on? The most recent news is that a section of the Conservative Party seems to be plotting the overthrow of yet another prime minister. That’s a prime minister who belongs to their own party, remember. Who leads their own party and who they put in office to replace a prime minister from their own party who they put in office to replace a prime minister from their own party who–

Et cetera. 

Irrelevant photo: primroses and lesser celandine.

What’s the latest plot?

A group of MPs (Members of Parliament; you’re welcome) met to discuss replacing Rishi Sunak with Penny Mordaunt. The group comes from the right wing of a party that has no left wing and whose anatomically awkward center wing is increasingly hard to spot (at least from the vantage point of my couch). Still, they seem to have located a few moderates to meet with and discuss their plotlet.

When I talk about the party’s right wing, mind you, I’m not talking about some unified group. They split apart as easily as mercury. This particular group could, if they’d wanted to, have backed Mordaunt in the last battle over who would be prime minister (she did run) but they wouldn’t because they didn’t like her views on trans rights. 

What are her views on trans rights? Good question. Two years ago, she either did or didn’t want to make it easier for them to transition. And she either did or didn’t make a U-turn on whatever her earlier position was. Or wasn’t. But since she hasn’t denounced them as a threat to women, weather, and western civilization, the culture warriors consider her woke.

Am I work? I got up at 5:30 this morning, walked the dog, and had two cups of tea. I’m writing this at 7 a.m. and I’m about as woke as it’s possible to be in that situation.

But we weren’t talking about me; we were talking about important people. If the right wing of the party–or this winglet of the right wing of the party–is going to back Mordaunt, the papers say she’d have to agree to farm out culture war issues to them. That way she could protect the purity of whatever she turns out to believe while still letting people who believe the opposite do whatever they think will earn votes from the rabid wing of the country’s electorate. 

Am I biased? I do have a few biases. They’re like accents: everyone has at least one, whether they know it or not. I like to take mine out and waive them around once in a while–it keeps them as fresh as if I’d dried them on the line–but my posts are as accurate as I can make them and I do my best to link to reputable sources. 

Will Mordaunt bite at the bait the plotters are dangling in front of her? She hasn’t said so, at least as I write this, but she also hasn’t said she wouldn’t, although her supporters make it sound unlikely.

This is political maneuvering, though. We can’t expect what people say to always match what they mean. Polls predict Mordaunt will lose her seat at the next election. It’s not out of the question that she’d rather wander out into the allegedly real world as ex-prime minister than as a lowly ex-MP.

 

Why choose Mordaunt?

The plotters have several reasons to have taken Mordaunt off the hanger when they chose their outfit for the day. One is that, as I’ve said in multiple posts, the Conservatives have an extremely shallow talent puddle and they’ve pretty well splashed all the water out of it. That’s what happens when you give kiddies rubber boots and turn them loose in wet weather. But the most important factor may be that during the king’s coronation she carried an eight-pound sword, upright and well in front of her body, for fifty-one minutes. 

The newspapers all agree that this is no easy trick. Since I’ve never tried it–we don’t have a lot swords at my house–I’ll have to take their word for it. The articles were written by serious journalists who wouldn’t just close their eyes and trust Mordaunt’s publicity machine on something this important. They will have borrowed eight-pound swords and tried it themselves.

If any of you have relevant experience, I’d love to hear about it. A reader who drops in to Notes from time to time is a weightlifter and has pulled a truck in competitions. Is she a good candidate for prime minister? She’s looking better all the time.

Sam, if you’re out there, we need your help here, at least as a sword-carrying consultant and quite possibly as a candidate for prime minister. Our slogan will be, Our candidate can pull a truck. Can yours?

 

Does the sword really matter?

Maybe not. Some people in the know are speculating that it isn’t Mordaunt the plotters want. They’re using her to hide their real plan, which is to trigger yet another leadership contest in the Conservative Party before the next election. Then they could put her in as prime minister and when she leads them into what pretty much everyone expects to be a disastrous defeat at the next election, they can blame her. That will clear the path for candidates who are further to the right to really, really lead the party, because waiting in the wings and oozing ambition are Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman, and Grant Shapps.

Will anything come of this? Anyone who thinks they can predict where we’re headed is delusional. 

As for Rishi Sunak, our prime minister du jour, he says his party’s united and life is fine. I have no information on how long he can hold a sword upright.

When will the next election be? Best guesses at the moment are that the election will happen in November. Or October. Or some other month. The latest possible date is January 25, 2025–five long years from the last one–but prime ministers can set earlier dates if they get lonely. 

 

What’ll happen at the next election?

Polls suggest a disaster for the Conservatives, although they’re hoping that if they postpone it long enough the economy will improve, all the gods I don’t believe in will descend from Mount Olympus to intervene, and they’ll scrape through. One of many wild cards, though, is that the main challenger, Labour, has divested itself of almost everything it ever stood for. That’s supposed to make them bulletproof. You know: if you don’t hang up a target, it’s hard for anyone to hit a bullseye. 

Whether that will get people to vote Labour is anyone’s guess. It’s hard to work up much passion for a party whose slogan is We’re not the Tories. Vote for us and we’ll all find out what we stand for. If anything.

As for the Liberal Democrats–the other major nationwide party–no one ever did know what they stand for. Or at least no one I know.

In the meantime, multiple MPs–whole flocks of them–are announcing that they won’t run again. Many have taken phone calls from reality and realized they can’t win, but it’s not just Conservatives who are giving up. Across the political spectrum, many are saying, essentially, “I can’t stand this anymore..” 

As Carolyn Lucas, a Green Party MP, put it, “In any other walk of life, if people behaved as they do here, they’d be out on their ear. . . . It is utterly, utterly dysfunctional. I mean, really, it’s loopy.”

44 thoughts on “How many prime ministers does it take to destroy a party?”

  1. British politics is an absolute mess. The Tories need to go, and soon, but Labour need to distinguish themselves as being more than Tory-Lite. I think Labour will comfortably win the election, or to be more accurate, the Tories will lose it, but from there… who knows what Labour will do. I know what I’d like them to do, but I don’t think they have the principles or conviction to do it.

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    • I’m with you on all of that. If I can keep myself from foaming at the mouth and throwing things–and I can occasionally–it will be interesting to see what Labour actually does if and when it’s in power. At the moment, it’s so busy filing off any policy that might possibly make itself visible that it’s hard to imagine the party actually has plans–although I’m sure it does. In some locked room somewhere. I suspect they’ll disappoint us both.

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  3. Wonderful, Ellen. As ever, you are my go-to source for analysis. Irreverent humour is the only way of staying sane these days. However, I must admit that even as a gentleman of proper leftward leanings, I was somewhat seduced – indeed sent all a wobble – by the image of Penny dressed in a Star Wars costume at the coronation. Perhaps it’s believed her previous employment as a magician’s assistant will conjure up a sleight of hand victory at the next election? I think it’s the only strategy they’ve got left, and worth a shot.

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    • A Star Wars costume! Perfect. I wish I’d known that she’d been a magician’s assistant. I could’ve had fun with that–you know, sawing the party in half, that sort of thing.

      Thanks for a valuable contribution to the absurdity I try to gather here.

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      • You’re welcome, Ellen. Now, Penny dressed as a magician’s assistant is also somewhat distracting, which I suppose is the point of magicians assistants, and may be another cunning strategy the incumbent party is considering. But I should rest it there.

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  6. Mordaunt = mordant ??

    Given the disintegration of the Republican Party over here and the likelihood of one ex-president to destroy the country, we have very little advice – or comfort – to offer.

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    • I’d be more optimistic if the Republican Party was disintegrating. Unfortunately, it seems to be holding together. Losing its old-style Republicans, true, but replacing them with full-blown lunatics. It’s not looking good out there, is it?

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  7. It’s actually getting WORSE, the longer they postpone it. It’s a shame they don’t have an utterly flawless opposition, but at this point I’d take almost anyone else instead.

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  8. I can not say something informed about British Inner Politics, so I better leave that alone. The only thing I know is that the former labour head, Corbyn, was a goddam Stalinist, a relic from very dark times. Hope this new man does better.

    What I never understood is that the MP seemingly ad libitum – as he just fancies – can call for an election, and hence the core of the democratic system is reduced to a tool of ruling. In able hands it can prolong one man’s rule quite plainly I guess. Is this what the legislator intended ?

    Maybe there lies the rub, because there is not “one” legislator, but many of them, possibly ranging from Sigfrid Bloodaxe to some 18th century aesthete.

    The two-handed sword of state “weighs 3.6 kg (8 lb) and is 1.2 m (4 ft) long”. As a “Bi-Händer” it is an executioner’s sword, bow and put the queue of hair aside, mon sieur …

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    • 1. It’s probably a typo, but for clarity: the PM–the prime minister–can call an election, not an MP. That allows them to shorten the length of time between elections but not lengthen it. The maximum term is 5 years. It’s a relatively new version of the rules governing elections, having been introduced sometime in the past 15 or 20 years, I think under Cameron. It allowed his government a little more time in office, but they can’t go on forever, mercifully.

      2. A sword for executions? Hmm. Don’t put ideas in my head.

      3. Corbyn is anything but a Stalinist. In terms of ruthlessly seizing control of the party and shutting down debate, it would be more accurate to accuse Starmer of Stalinism than Corbyn, who allowed himself to be undercut by a party machine he didn’t take control of.

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  9. If the UK had a genuinely free press instead of one owned by a few non-dom billionaires politicians more get get away with less. Or maybe not. Shockingly 30 per cent of British people don’t know who the PM is.

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    • Actually governing seems to be low on the list of priorities, which is why they’re obsessed with an unworkable plan to send refugees to Rwanda. If they could implement it–and the odds are that they can’t–it would be cruel, expensive, and pointless, but the impossibility of getting it working allows them to blame everyone else for it not getting done.

      Sounds a bit circular, doesn’t it?

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  11. The Greens over here have rather sycessfully imploded of late and they were the last bastion of a semi-coherent political system. The other three are all huddled close to the center line, (but leaning to the right) but as we get somewhat closer to a federal election in October ’25, the huddle will of course start to ooze in all directions, but one.

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  12. Most people in this country are somewhere around the center. Polls continually indicate that immigration is a low voter priority vs a functioning state.

    And yet the Tories, who have slipped further in the polls the further right they have lurched, lack the self awareness to realise and think moving further right will somehow right the ship.

    I really hope the nut jobs all defect to Reform where they won’t get any cover for their true beliefs anymore and it further splits and sinks the right wing vote in the UK for a generation.

    If this did happen then we’d end up with a Labour government and the Lib Dem’s in opposition. Oh to see the press rooms at the Sin and Daily Fail on that day.

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    • The Tories remind me of the doomsday cults that predict the end of the world on a specific date. When the date passes, instead of dissolving (so studies say) they pull closer together, explaining the failure by some glitch in their calculations or a lack of sufficient faith. So: what we’re doing doesn’t work? Okay. We’ll do more of it. No problem.

      I do worry about the drift into the Reform Party. Yes, it’s their natural home, but having watch the rightward shift in the US I’m uncomfortably aware of how a committed group of nutburgers can pull the national conversation to the right. See: Brexit. In the meantime, though, I am enjoying the Tories’ breakdown. It’s great theater.

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