If the final four are likely to be Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat, and A N Other, the timetable proposed by the 1922 Committee yesterday looks set to ensure good sport.
As Jeremy Hunt pointed out yesterday, “every Labour government in history” has ended up hiking taxes, and Reeves “should have been honest about that before the election”.
The question hangs on what this year’s party conference should be: a coronation ceremony for the winner or a beauty pageant for contenders. How long will Sunak stay on and CCHQ’s funds last?
This looks less like a genuine attempt to improve the functioning of our revising chamber, but a kneejerk act of petty anti-Tory attitude-striking.
Unused to opposition, this art will take time. But today provides our first learning opportunity. Backing the two-child limit revolt would be no bad start.
Unless we keep politicians in hermetically sealed containers, they will always be vulnerable to forms of abuse, intimidation, and violence. But the threat is rising.
It would be a test of principle. Can Labour backbenchers work with the Conservatives? The policy has had little success achieving its original aims.
Similarly, a majority of our panel do not think a particular focus on winning back Reform’s voters is the right approach for the party going forward.
With a Shadow Cabinet in place and a new Chairman of the 1922 Committee being elected this afternoon, the contours of the coming race are becoming clearer. Would a fresh start be best?
It would be wrong to say that this is a restoration of the pre-2010 regime, since plenty of ministers, and most of the Cabinet, have never been in government before. But executive experience and knowledge of policy briefs are at a premium.
Labour’s majority is huge but fragile. Things will get worse before they can improve. Despite the scale of our defeat, we must position ourselves to win and govern in 2029. It is time for Tory Leninism.
Nobody will pretend that the last few years have been perfect, or that victory today is possible. But a Labour landslide still needs an Opposition. And every Tory vote is a step back towards office.
It has become increasingly obvious in recent weeks that Labour’s tax and spending plans are as fictitious as we long suspected.
Could a combination of aggressive building in the south and greater devolution across the north have produced a more durable Conservative coalition?
The Tories have done pretty well out of first-past-the-post for the last two centuries. Junking our support for it in a kneejerk response to the coming shellacking would be short-sighted.