The cruelest cut in UK’s Tory leadership race

A short time before voting closed in the latest elimination round of the Tory leadership contest, Michael Gove, a Conservative Party heavyweight whom Boris Johnson sacked from cabinet before his own downfall, made the case for Kemi Badenoch. Speaking to the think tank Policy Exchange, he called Badenoch his “intellectual superior,” who had three things the next leader needed: “courage, conviction and clarity.”
Either the bulk of Conservative MPs didn’t see the same qualities in Badenoch or they decided they can get them elsewhere (including with Badenoch in a future cabinet). After the vote, there are three possibilities for Britain’s next prime minister — and Badenoch isn’t one.
The next bit sounds straightforward. Conservative MPs need to whittle the final list — of Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss and Penny Mordaunt — down to two. Then they give the party membership six weeks to put the candidates through their paces and pick the next prime minister. But that last cut is the hardest to make.
The problem is not simply that it’s hard to name a single candidate with the charisma to repeat Johnson’s electoral successes, the gravitas to elevate the party above the enormous damage he did to the Tory brand and the experience to manage the huge problems the country faces from the cost-of-living crisis to the war in Ukraine. The Conservatives are nothing if not realistic. Johnson was unique in many ways, but other leadership candidates bring strengths that couldn’t shine when he hogged all the limelight; and they don’t call it cabinet government for nothing.
The Tories know that perfection doesn’t exist; the problem is they just can’t agree what they’re optimising for in the next leader.
Is it governing experience? If so, then Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss — the big beasts left standing from Boris Johnson’s cabinet — are the best candidates to put to voters. And yet to look at both is to recall their close ties to the Johnson era, even if Sunak resigned his position toward the end.
If MPs want a choice that also optimises for charisma and voter appeal, something Johnson had in spades, then it will be hard to leave Liz Truss in the final two, no matter how authoritative she seems. Truss, who still trails Mordaunt in the MP voting, polls extremely well among Tory members, but even she acknowledged not being the slickest of candidates.
Given the cost-of-living crisis and rising inflation, you’d think MPs would place a premium on the candidate with the most compelling economic plan. After all, the next leader takes over a medium-sized global power and G7 economy. That’s a high bar for the less experienced Mordaunt, who’s not done much in recent days to dispel the sense that her economic policy views lack much detail. Whether that’s tactical or she just hasn’t had time to think through these things (though she did write a book laying out her governing vision), is not clear.
If Mordaunt has a credibility problem and Truss a relatability problem, then Sunak faces a bigger hurdle in the final run: It’s called the Daily Mail, a tabloid that is gospel for many party members (along with the Daily Telegraph) and that has attacked Sunak’s economic record pretty ferociously. Given the string of scandals that brought Johnson down, and the deep loss of public trust, the party may decide it must optimise foremost for character. Sunak and Truss both score highly on personal integrity.

—Bloomberg