And then there were four, each of them more than capable of leading our party. Robert Jenrick has fought a brilliant campaign, speaks fluently, and seems to have put the most thought into what needs to happen next.
Kemi Badenoch has an irresistible back-story, and her excoriations of wokery are a joy to hear – all the more so because Lefties don’t know how to respond when their critics are not white men.
James Cleverly is the most likeable of men, and is lucky enough to transmit his affability through a screen. Anyone who thinks this doesn’t matter should ponder how our fortunes in Scotland rose and fell with Ruth Davidson, who may not have been the cleverest or best-qualified leadership candidate, but who had a similar amiability.
Tom Tugendhat is a gent, who takes great care to treat supporters and opponents decently and courteously. In our angry and divided political age, that matters a great deal (to me, at any rate).
Remember, though, that the candidates are auditioning to be leader of the opposition. If they don’t succeed in that role, who cares whether they would reverse VAT on school fees or pull out of the ECHR.
No single human being possesses all the skills needed to lead an opposition party. You must command the House of Commons, inspiring your side and unsettling the other. You need to be a convincing media performer, clever without being a clever-dick.
You should be authoritative, the sort of prime minister people can imagine dealing with world leaders, yet also relatable. You need to be able to read and remember lots of people. You must be a superb delegator.
You should also have your finger on the popular pulse without being populist. The rush by all six original contenders to condemn Labour’s restriction of winter fuel payments is an example of opposition for its own sake.
(The candidates may have felt, given the demographics of our membership, that they had little option. But the fact remains that the triple lock is again putting up pensioners’ incomes by more than they are losing. More to the point, Conservatives should see benefits as a last resort for those who have no other options, not as an unconditional entitlement.)
Above all, the next leader needs to sort out a decrepit and declining party structure. The last election showed up huge weaknesses in almost every aspect of Conservative organisation. Membership has collapsed from 260,000 when David Cameron became party leader to perhaps 90,000 now; money has dried up, requiring mass redundancies at CCHQ; candidate selection was late, partial and shambolic.
As for our campaigning, the less said the better. We were outperformed on social media, in leaflets, and in door-knocking. Our messaging was lamentable. In the run-up to the last election, I would occasionally turn (more in hope than expectation) to the party website, just in case it contained some argument for voting Conservative. But all I found was a series of boasts about how we had increased this or that budget.
Perhaps it should not surprise us. When a party is in office, its best endeavours (and best brains) are devoted to running the country, not itself. For fourteen years, Labour could concentrate on modernising its party structures. Now, the roles are reversed.
The renovation of our party is the first task of a new leader. We should be less interested in what they would do as prime minister than in what they will do right away.
There is nothing inevitable about the decline in membership. The Canadian Conservatives recently quadrupled their numbers to more than 600,000.
The difference is that, instead of being jealous about membership rights, they positively encourage leadership candidates to sign up new people so as to vote for them. Almost all the new Canadian Tories joined to vote for Pierre Poilievre, currently my favourite politician in the world, who has radically altered the profile of his party, attracting a young membership by focusing on affordable housing.
Fundraising is mainly about getting someone at CCHQ who is both popular with the grass-roots and able to charm money out of rich people. I have previously suggested Jacob Rees-Mogg, who used to raise (and manage) funds for a living, and who delights the members more than any other leading Tory.
The people in charge of candidate selection last time have moved on, creating a space for a different approach. We need both local experience and new talent, successful councillors and, yes, some former spads. When you are picking a cricket XI, you don’t pick eleven leg spinners.
We need to make policy offers that voters believe as well as liking. Our principles are more widely shared, both within the party and among the wider electorate, than is sometimes realised.
Almost every voter wants immigration controlled. Most people accept that Britain should have a friendly relationship with the EU than stops short of membership. People generally approve of traditional teaching in school, free speech, and a biological definition of sex. Everyone (except the Greens) wants economic growth.
The reason the Tories did not deliver on these things is not, as ConHome comment threads often allege, that the party is secretly controlled by a cabal of manqué Lib Dems. Rather, it is that the Tories never got on top of the administrative state. Again and again, ministers would order something – building more prisons, say, or scrapping EU-era regulations – only to find that the officials charged with carrying out their order would circumvent it.
How to bring the bureaucracy back under democratic control merits a longer column than this one. I happen to favour an Australian-style system, where ministers bring in more outsiders, and can hire and fire the upper ranks in their departments.
Such a system (unlike that in the US) is compatible with the Westminster model and, combined with the curtailment of domestic and foreign judicial activism, would make the act of casting a ballot far more meaningful. But there are doubtless better ideas out there.
The point is that, while getting on with the immediate task of sorting out our fundraising, membership, candidate selection and so on, the next leader needs to be working out how to solve this issue.
It may not be something to campaign on (voters find it dull), but it is vital to have a reform plan that can be implemented immediately on taking office. And, given the way Labour is governing, that day may come sooner than we think.
As for whom I will back, I have made it a rule since 2001 not to express a preference until MPs have voted. Regular readers will know that I never liked these rules, and I take the sovereignty of Parliament seriously. When we’re down to the last two, I’ll decide who more closely meets these criteria, and I’ll be sure to let you know.