Inside the UK’s dirtiest (and dumbest) political battle in years

LONDON — No one predicted the race for the United Kingdom Conservative Party leadership would go quite like this. And, as so often has been the case in recent years, Boris Johnson had a hand in it. 

That, at least, that was the contention of certain Tory insiders who assembled at the grand setting of the Institute of Directors on London’s Pall Mall for the glitzy launch of the former prime minister’s memoirs this month. 

Mingling with the stellar cast of guests was Shadow Home Secretary James Cleverly, at the time still a candidate for party leader and riding high after unexpectedly topping the ballot of MPs who were on the cusp of deciding which two contenders to send through to the final round.

His decision to attend, according to some, sealed his downfall. The very next day he dropped two crucial votes from his tally of MP backers and promptly found himself out of the race. 

“James was walking around with his wife, looking presidential,” said one ex-MP who had been in attendance that night. “And I was just thinking, ‘what the hell are you doing here?’”

Cleverly may have hoped that by attending the swanky soiree a trace of Johnson’s sometime-star quality might have rubbed off on him. However, his fellow attendees were left wondering why he wasn’t following the example of his two rivals — Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch — and hitting the phones to win over votes from a tiny electorate of MPs, hardly any of whom were in the room.

The former foreign secretary’s fumble was just one curveball in a campaign for the Tory leadership which has been full of plot twists, skullduggery and good old-fashioned screwups. 

POLITICO spoke to more than a dozen MPs, aides and activists with inside knowledge of the race, most of whom were granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal matters.

One Cleverly ally perhaps summed it up best, describing the contest as dictated by “people with the winning combination of a leadership vote and room-temperature IQ who think they’re in House of Cards” — a reference to the book and TV show about plotting in the U.K. parliament later transplanted to the United States.

‘Batshit crazy’

This week marks a pivotal moment in the long campaign to become leader of the Conservative Party.

The race began in July after the party suffered one of its worst electoral defeats in memory, triggering the resignation of Rishi Sunak in the hours after he was ejected from No. 10 Downing St. 

Party bosses opted for a three-month process concluding on Nov. 2, in the belief that a long contest might begin the process of healing and reunification after years of bitter infighting within the party.

It was a decision many observers had doubts about at the time. Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London, questioned whether the good intentions had borne fruit. “When you elongate the contest all you do is give people longer to take lumps out of each other,” he told POLITICO.

In the intervening months, the field has gradually been whittled down to two in a series of secret ballots by MPs. Still in the race are Badenoch, the combative former business secretary, and Jenrick, the reinvented former immigration minister. 

With the MPs’ part of the process out of the way, it’s now down to Conservative Party members to pick the winner, with many expected to vote this week as ballot papers arrive in the post — coinciding with the pair’s first, and possibly only, TV debate on GB News.

The final round is as remarkable for who isn’t there as for who is: The erstwhile darling of the Tory right, Suella Braverman, didn’t even put herself forward, perhaps sensing her moment had passed. Another hard-line grassroots favorite, Priti Patel, was eliminated at an early stage.

Nor is there a representative from the centrist or “one-nation” wing of the party, after Shadow Security Secretary Tom Tugendhat, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride and Cleverly all failed to progress.

At every stage there have been accusations of deliberate “vote-lending” by one team or another, a reference to the sleight of hand in which MPs vote for a candidate who is not their favorite in order to knock out a rival whom they see as a threat. 

These rumors grew especially loud when Cleverly was unexpectedly knocked out, as onlookers suspected some of his followers had diverted their votes to Jenrick on the grounds he would be easier to beat than Badenoch.

All teams deny vote-lending, with Cleverly’s campaign chair Grant Shapps calling the idea he would have encouraged anyone not to vote for his man “absolutely batshit crazy, literally mad, and I’d never, ever, ever condone it.”

Another Cleverly ally bemoaned “the one little shit-weasel who devotedly tells absolutely everybody they’re voting for them,” with most agreeing that Cleverly’s elimination resulted from unsanctioned action by MP backers who thought they were helping only for it to backfire.

Mudslinging frenzy

While the exact choreography of the MPs’ ballots may never be known, there is plenty more for fans of political chicanery to sink their teeth into. 

The two remaining candidates occupy a broadly similar space on the right of the party, talking tough on immigration and embracing the culture wars while strongly backing Israel and attacking multiculturalism.

One side effect of this is that the last part of the contest has already become intensely personal, as they each try to get the edge on the other. 

Badenoch supporters allege that Jenrick — seen as a middle-of-the road, centrist Tory until he quit Rishi Sunak’s government last year over immigration — is malleable and cannot be trusted.

“It’s fair to say he’s ‘been on a journey,’” noted one Badenoch-backing MP. 

Some of Jenrick’s opponents go further and say that should he succeed, he would essentially be beholden to a set of right-wing power players who ditched Braverman when it became clear she lacked support, and threw their weight behind him. 

Among these are garrulous Tory veteran John Hayes and intellectual evangelist Danny Kruger, who have played a key part in Jenrick’s campaign and would likely help shape the future of the party if he won.

“I am absolutely certain that the likes of Kruger and Hayes and [fellow right-winger] Mark Francois think that they can control him and make him do what they want,” said a member of Badenoch’s team.

Jenrick has promised to make ex-MP Jacob Rees-Mogg chair of the party if elected, and several MPs said he had been profligate in handing out theoretical shadow Cabinet roles, including the post of chief whip to Kruger.

Former MP and one-time leadership contender Penny Mordaunt distanced herself from Jenrick after he used her image on his social media without her permission, in an apparent effort to woo her fans.

His bid to go extremely hard on immigration has not been without pitfalls either, as he landed himself in trouble for claiming that British special forces are “killing rather than capturing terrorists” because of the risk they would be freed under human rights law.

In turn, Jenrick’s backers claim that Badenoch is unpredictable, rude and lazy.

One MP allied to Jenrick said that despite Badenoch’s being an early front-runner, her journey to the final two was rocky because “a lot of MPs have not wanted back her because she’s been so bloody rude to them,” and “she’s always shooting from the hip.” 

Badenoch memorably went to war with the influential European Research Group over retained European Union law and earned a sharp dressing-down from Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle after she declined to properly apologize for her handling of the matter.

Her tendency to misfire came to the fore at the Tory Party conference, when she sparked outrage by saying maternity pay had “gone too far,” and was later forced to insist she had been misinterpreted.

A few weeks before the conference, she turned up half an hour late to a regional hustings. Two undecided party members told POLITICO they had resolved to lend their support to Badenoch if she apologized on arrival — which she did not. (Badenoch’s team said arrivals at the event were staggered and she had nothing to apologize for.)

Foul play claims

Despite well-reported missteps, Badenoch is widely seen as enjoying a slight advantage over Jenrick, with voters in a recent focus group organized by More in Common praising her as “a breath of fresh air.”

Jenrick’s team insists the momentum is with him and has challenged Badenoch to participate in an additional TV debate. 

In another sensational piece of briefing, a Jenrick campaign aide claimed Conservative Campaign Headquarters had sought to block further debates because the party’s chairman, Richard Fuller, is secretly backing Badenoch. 

A spokesperson for Fuller strongly denied this, saying: “The chairman is and has remained neutral throughout the contest. TV debates and hustings are to be agreed by the party board and are for the campaign teams to decide to commit to.”

Advisers to both campaigns have accused the other side of being in cahoots with infamous former No. 10 fixer Dougie Smith, who was colorfully denounced by former Cabinet minister and Boris Johnson ally Nadine Dorries last year.

Both campaigns have also faced questions about funding, with Badenoch failing to declare she was running her operation from the home of a wealthy donor, and Jenrick accepting £75,000 from a company that has taken loans from a tax haven-registered firm.

According to a campaign official, Jenrick also rented office space from a consultancy called College Green Group, which has previously been accused of trying to avoid scrutiny for APPGs and has engaged in extensive lobbying for northern Cyprus, a breakaway territory recognized only by Turkey.

The placeholder leader?

Beyond all the noise, the two would-be leaders are separated by subtle differences in outlook, approach and policy. 

Jenrick has set out what his team describes as a “thought-through” policy program, including quitting the European Court of Human Rights and a renewed focus on house building and the NHS.

Badenoch, in contrast, has pitched a more wide-ranging project called “Renewal 2030” in which she would engage with the party in deciding how to move forward on various policy questions. 

Whichever option Conservative members pick, however, it is clear the immediate future of the party lies on the right, with no centrist candidate left in the running.

Although both candidates have pledged to represent Tories of all stripes, a Badenoch aide admitted that what is coming will be a break with the past. 

Putting Badenoch and Jenrick in the top two was “a clear vote for a return to core Conservative values,” they said, “which we’d moved away from by getting tied up with things like the smoking ban.”

Not everyone is happy about that, however, with the centrist Tory Reform Group declaring it would not back either camp because “both have used rhetoric and focused on issues which are far and away from the party at its best.”

Election 2029

One former Cabinet minister said that while they wished the next leader every success, “to win an election we just need to be in the center ground, on our natural territory,” and that it would be “a mistake to move away from that.”

Many Tories suspect, with the Conservative ranks severely depleted at the outset of a five-year Labour term, that the new leader may not stay the course — especially if they cannot show improvement at next year’s local elections. 

Bale said: “Members are obviously motivated by ideology, but they’re also motivated by wanting to be part of a party that wins elections.”

Some are already speculating that it could be Cleverly or even Boris Johnson who takes over before the next election — with plenty of time for yet another dramatic twist in the Tories’ checkered fortunes.

Mason Boycott-Owen, Sam Blewett and Dan Bloom contributed to this report.