Penny Mordaunt backers blame ‘vicious personal smears’ for her Tory leadership downfall
And?
The entire game is that, by personality – for it’s most definitely not by technical skill or professional knowledge, is it? – this person, these people, get to tell everyone else what to do. Which is going to get vicious about personalities, isn’t it?
The most damning indictment of Ms Mordaunt is that despite being left with either Truss or Sunak there is the inescapable feeling that we have actually dodged a bullet.
After all this I’ve still no idea what she stands for. She made John “gray man” Major seem decisive.
I’m not sure who I’d choose of the 2 if I had a vote, probably Rishi as watching lefty heads explodes will be more entertaining.
I was impressed with the diversity on offer for the conservative leadership; A man of Asian heritage, a woman of Asian heritage, a woman of African heritage, a white woman but who was from the North, and an obviously castrated eunuch. Mordant was the only one that couldn’t claim any special characteristics, although had she won she would have made it Tory female PMs 3 – Labour 0, which would have been fun.
I would have preferred Kemi, but she was probably too conservative for the Conservative party.
@HHG
+1 for Kemi and your reasoning.
@Harry Haddock’s Ghost
It’s probably best that Kemi didn’t win. Governments rarely get re-elected after major events. The pandemic and particularly the effects of the lockdown were major so it’s likely that the Tory leader be it Sunak or Truss will be ousted soon after the next election. That could be the right time for Kemi to be elected leader and put the Conservatives back in power four or five years later.
Not just PMs, the labour party has never even chosen a leader who isn’t a white male. And yet they try to lecture the rest of us on the benefits of diversity.
Isn’t this that jolly good sport who famously gave a speech in the Commons featuring the overuse of the word “cock”? So that her brother officers could see what a superb fun gel she was? Where’s her sense of humour gone?
Sam – my gut reaction to her cock speech is that she’s another Boris, and doesn’t take the job seriously. We’ve just had a comedian for PM, we don’t need another one.
Kemi was too new with little experience. She could make a more solid name for herself in a Truss cabinet for another go in the future.
I doubt that a GE loss would necessarily be curtains for the new PM, whichever one. If they make a complete pig’s ear of the economy though… And if they then lost the next one then that would definitely be that.
I tend to agree eith HHG more than TG on that one. Kemi is someone not tainted by failure in high office but too much of a conservative for the deviants and socialists in the Tory Parl party.
If Truss runs a campaign as crap ad May’s, her tenure will be very short.
Is there any brit politics that does not involve vicious personal smears?
John- well put. Maybe the most damning thing about the Tory MPs is that >100 voted for her to be prime minister.
As for it being a good election for Badenoch to lose, I don’t think there is such a thing. Think of what a real conservative could do with 2.5 years and an 80 seat majority.
Grikath
Nope. It’s the whole point of the exercise. Even the names Tories and Whigs insults.
I am constantly dismayed at the lack of insults in Germanc politics, I guess old Adi gave it a bad name.
Penny Mordaunt backers blame ‘vicious personal smears’ for her Tory leadership downfall
Lol, bye cunt.
George Freeman, a former science minister, said: “Penny Mordaunt was the breakthrough change candidate with a positive campaign, a clear set of doorstep policy priorities for hard-pressed households and the strongest polling with target voters.”
Those target voters are Lib Dems with cerebral palsy who might accidentally put a shaky X against the Tory candidate by mistake.
Writing on Twitter, Elliot Colburn, Conservative MP for Carshalton and Wallington, said:
I’m so sorry that
@PennyMordaunt
didn’t make it into the final two, and sorry to the members who wanted the chance to vote for her. A true Conservative with service to the nation in her blood, she should be proud, especially with the venom directed at her.
Ursula von der Leyen’s retarded English cousin is a true Conservative, because she sexually identifies as one.
I absolutely agree. So how many of those ‘vicious personal smears’ were true, either in part or in full. Ah, that’s kind of different then.
As others have said, despite the final two being WEF tainted acolyte Rishi Sunak and former Lib/Dem cum Poundland Maggie Thatcher Liz Truss, I do think we’ve dodged a bullet with Penny Mordant. Her CV looks good on paper but she’s seriously wet, weak and watery where it counts.
I doubt that Rishi will survive the Tory party at large, despite his support in the Parliamentary Tory party, he’s just too tainted with BoJo’s assassination and that will go down like a lead balloon in the constituencies.
No doubt they’ll try and paint the results as arising from the usual “Golf club racists” of the local party membership, but I suspect that if Kemi had won through the results would have been very different.
I guess it’s all down to whether Liz Truss blows her advantage or not.
Shame they can’t both lose.
Electing Penny would be like replacing Boris with Carrie.
It will be interesting to see if a 4th successive “conservative” PM, in this case with an 80 seat majority +/-1 or 2, fails to implement the 2010 boundaries commission recommendations and thereby continues to gift Labour a 20-30 seat head start in any general election.
In other words will Rishi/Liz actively avoid protecting/enhancing their party’s chances for fear of the expectation of actually passing some conservative legislation.
They’re not going to do it are they? They’d genuinely prefer Starmer.
“After all this I’ve still no idea what she stands for. She made John “gray man” Major seem decisive.”
The thing I do with politicians is look at small announcements and try and grasp where they’re generally at from it. Like PM wanted this whole daft thing of internet companies having to pay for news, and generally regulating the net a lot more. With arbitration about payment. And I know it’s only a small thing, but if you come to the conclusion that is a good policy it’s either because you aren’t thinking, or you’re thinking that more government is the answer. And if you think more government is the answer to that, what else do you think more government is the answer to.
It’s like I distrusted Cameron from the moment he complained about WH Smith selling chocolate. I didn’t really trust Boris much because of his enthusiasm for the Olympics. If people think government should interfere in those trivial things, they’re going to think government should interfere in many other things. I wasn’t exactly surprised that Boris went ahead with HS2 and gave more money to the NHS to clear the Covid backlog rather than hiring the private sector.
JG – yes, she was definitely the weakest candidate despite Rishi being a grinning spaffer with a financial interest in offshoring more British jobs to his family business in India, and Liz Truss having the mental acuity of an irritated cockatoo. Nobody needs yet another Hillary Clinton / Nicola Sturgeon / Jacinda Horseface clone.
I expect the party members will go for Truss, because choosing a billionaire international banker whose roots in this country are shallower than watercress isn’t a good look as we head into the winter recession. They’ll be accused of waythithm obvs, but it’s not really about skin tone or which particular 6-armed elephant deity one worships, it’s about something much more fundamental than that – whose side are you on?
Saj would’ve been a more plausible ethnic minority candidate, because he’s not married to a filthy rich foreigner who doesn’t pay tax here and also directly profits from displacing Brits from their livelihoods. Kemi would probably have been ok, but she’s a junior politician with no real experience so I’m not convinced she’d have been able to pull off the infamous “lurch to the Right” the Tories are accused of every time they briefly remember they’re supposed to be conservatives. I expect she’d have riled up a few people with accurate comments about trannies and whatnot, while Sir Humphrey continued as normal.
I would have voted for her for the lulz tho.
Pretty much @Steve.
We’ve now got a competition for “Who’s the least worst?” Ugh! No wonder the Tory party at large are trying to get BoJo back on the ballot.
Shame about Kemi. Right sort but too Tory for the current Blue Labour party I would have thought, plus needs a bit of senior ministerial experience. Maybe next time though, when the Tories are back in the meaninglessness of opposition before a Lib/Lab/SNP alliance.
JG – I think they’ll regret knifing Boris, who was a complete bombscare of a PM, but doesn’t seem to be personally malicious and is still the best campaigner they have.
But I’m surprised at how poorly Boris was protected. It was obvious the media was out to Corbyn him even before he became Chief Tory. He should’ve had a Bernard Ingham type minder to keep things on track while Boris concentrated on gladhanding and speechifying. Instead, they just let the guy twist in the wind until the rope frayed and broke. Partygate is the most ridiculous and petty political ‘scandal’ I can remember, and it didn’t even involve toe sucking or autoerotic asphyxiation.
“I guess it’s all down to whether Liz Truss blows her advantage or not.” Fnarr fnarr…
Three pips for Philip.
@John: yeah and they should reverse Toni Blair’s racist law to invite vote cheating at elections too.
If I were a Conservative member I’d vote for whichever promised to cancel HS2 and to defer net zero until 2099.
But I’m surprised at how poorly Boris was protected.
Really? It’s not surprising at all that he wasn’t “in”. The same fate will befall any politician, especially conservative, who deliberately or accidentally gives the people what they want over the heads of the permanent government.
That’s why it’s almost certain to be Sunak selected. The party machine will protect their own creature and allow Truss to fail at every turn. She’ll have to be a lot smarter than she seems to overcome that. If she does, she’ll probably be politically worthy of the job.
PJF – yarp. I’m surprised he, and his allies (he has some) didn’t do more to defend his position. The drumbeat to get rid of the guy was impossible to miss.
Maybe the departure of Dominic Cummings had something to do with it, after he left Boris’ administration seemed to be out of ideas and treading water.
It’s true the permanent establishment will attack anybody they’re not pleased with, but TPTB aren’t all-powerful and omnicompetent by any means. Boris made it easy to replace him, contrast with Trump where they had to resort to fictional Russian plots and blatant electoral fraud to crowbar him out of office.
Something said on Twitter about Truss being a LibDem reminded me of the Orange Bookers. Right now I’d be a LibDem if it meant we got those policies:
https://iea.org.uk/blog/the-orange-book-and-the-battle-to-reclaim-liberalism
@Harry
I would have preferred Kemi, but she was probably too conservative for the Conservative party
Ahem, too conservative for the Conservative MPs and Central office
Good article:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/why-cant-the-tory-grass-roots-vote-for-the-leader-we-really-want/