Waiting for the next bus?

Tweet

 

It's tempting to see the result of the latest ballot among Tory MPs to choose a new temporary leader as being just another display of the inherent duplicity of the species. But, whilst there certainly is an element of that involved, it seems that the reality on this occasion is that it’s an even bigger demonstration of their incompetence. Their complete absence of trust in each other has meant that they couldn’t even stich up an election where the electorate is only 120 strong. The ‘explanation’ for the result is apparently that some supporters of James Cleverly – the walking, talking demonstration of the inapplicability of the theory of nominative determinism – were so confident that he was going to be in the last two that, instead of voting for him, they voted for the one that they thought he'd best be able to beat.

They think that they’re such a clever and sophisticated electorate that holding multiple ballots eliminating one candidate each time enables them to use all the low cunning which they possess to game the system so that the final run-off is between the one they want to win and the one that (s)he stands the best chance of beating. But here’s the thing: if we look at the very first round of voting back at the beginning of September, the order in which four were eliminated precisely matches the result achieved just over a month ago. And if they’d used the first-past-the-post system, which they insist is the only democratic way of voting, to select the final two they would have ended up with the same two that they’ve actually got. A month of political manoeuvring, Machiavellianism and dissimulation has got them exactly where they could have been a month ago.

It's hard to say whether the use of STV would have produced a different result. I suspect that having to rank six candidates in order of preference might have been too big an intellectual ask of many of them, but it would certainly have been much harder to game. Maybe the result would have been the same anyway, just achieved a lot more quickly. What is clear is that, whether by accident or design, an overwhelming majority of Tory MPs have opted for a final contest to select the candidate who can do the most to wreck what remains of a once-formidable election-winning organisation. And all the signs are that the aging, white, wealthy, south-east England based membership will enthusiastically assist in that aim. But Tory leadership campaigns are like buses: there’ll be another one along shortly.