If you are under this age please leave the board.
Luton Outlaws disclaims all liability for such content to the fullest extent permitted by law.
Any potentially libellous comments that might jeopardise the future of this messageboard will therefore be deleted, and the person posting them will receive a ban.Enjoy.
- Re: Cleverly out
- Cleverly out - Archi 9/10/2024, 15:36:33
- Re: Cleverly out - Tommy Cooper 9/10/2024, 19:17:41
- Re: Cleverly out - Spud 9/10/2024, 19:12:59
- Re: Cleverly out - MG 9/10/2024, 18:31:04
- Re: Cleverly out - Godders 9/10/2024, 17:55:37
- Re: Cleverly out - Um 9/10/2024, 18:41:15
- Re: Cleverly out - The Cruiser 9/10/2024, 18:24:18
- Re: Cleverly out - Eartheart 9/10/2024, 21:35:49
- Re: Cleverly out - Eartheart 9/10/2024, 21:35:49
- Re: Cleverly out - The Outsider 9/10/2024, 18:00:09
- Re: Cleverly out - Godders 9/10/2024, 18:04:34
- Re: Cleverly out - The Outsider 10/10/2024, 1:47:29
- Re: Cleverly out - The Outsider 9/10/2024, 18:22:50
- Re: Cleverly out - Trainspotter 9/10/2024, 18:37:12
- Re: Cleverly out - Doris 9/10/2024, 18:41:29
- Re: Cleverly out - Doris 9/10/2024, 18:41:29
- Re: Cleverly out - Trainspotter 9/10/2024, 18:37:12
- Re: Cleverly out - boz 9/10/2024, 18:03:41
- Re: Cleverly out - Godders 9/10/2024, 18:04:34
- Re: Cleverly out - boz 9/10/2024, 17:58:54
- Re: Cleverly out - Godders 9/10/2024, 18:07:12
- Re: Cleverly out - boz 9/10/2024, 18:22:25
- Re: Cleverly out - boz 9/10/2024, 18:22:25
- Re: Cleverly out - Godders 9/10/2024, 18:07:12
- Re: Cleverly out - Um 9/10/2024, 18:41:15
- Re: Cleverly out - Gift spotter 9/10/2024, 16:16:41
- Re: Cleverly out - Realistic 9/10/2024, 18:24:49
- Re: Cleverly out - Trainspotter 9/10/2024, 19:17:18
- Re: Cleverly out - Trainspotter 9/10/2024, 19:17:18
- Re: Cleverly out - Realistic 9/10/2024, 18:24:49
- Re: Cleverly out - Andy Cappuccino 9/10/2024, 16:03:00
- Re: Cleverly out - Nearly a Genius 9/10/2024, 16:06:53
- Re: Cleverly out - Nearly a Genius 9/10/2024, 16:06:53
- Re: Cleverly out - KS 9/10/2024, 15:55:24
- Re: Cleverly out - crumpsall 9/10/2024, 15:49:39
- Re: Cleverly out - Madpig 9/10/2024, 20:13:59
- Re: Cleverly out - Gift Spotter 9/10/2024, 16:18:05
- Re: Cleverly out - Madpig 9/10/2024, 20:13:59
- Re: Cleverly out - James 9/10/2024, 15:37:49
- Re: Cleverly out - m 9/10/2024, 15:54:18
- Re: Cleverly out - James real one 9/10/2024, 16:26:23
- Re: Cleverly out - It probably 9/10/2024, 17:24:46
- Re: Cleverly out - Rust Cohle 9/10/2024, 18:18:48
- Re: Cleverly out - James real one 9/10/2024, 17:56:12
- Re: Cleverly out - Rust Cohle 9/10/2024, 18:18:48
- Re: Cleverly out - It probably 9/10/2024, 17:24:46
- Re: Cleverly out - James real one 9/10/2024, 16:26:23
- Re: Cleverly out - m 9/10/2024, 15:54:18
« Back to index | View thread » - Re: Cleverly out - Tommy Cooper 9/10/2024, 19:17:41
From leader to loser: Five ways James Cleverly could have lost support
Why the man who was overnight favourite to win the Conservative leadership contest didn’t even make it to the final
815
Gordon Rayner
Associate Editor.
Daniel Martin
Deputy Political Editor
09 October 2024 6:24pm BST
If ever proof was needed that Tory MPs are the most opaque electorate in the world, this was it.
First became last, third became first, and the man who was the overnight favourite to win the leadership contest didn’t even make it to the final.
James Cleverly – who needed just two more votes than he received in the previous round to get into the last two – may well spend the rest of his life wondering how he managed to get two fewer votes on Wednesday than he had the day before.
Advertisement
There were gasps in Committee Room 14 of the House of Commons as the result was announced by Bob Blackman, the 1922 Committee chairman – gasps that were repeated around Westminster as others watched the result on TV screens.
Mr Cleverly, who had posed confidently with Boris Johnson at the latter’s book launch the night before, was expected to be the main beneficiary of the 20 votes up for grabs after fellow moderate Tom Tugendhat was knocked out on Tuesday, thus surging through as the clear winner.
So how on Earth did he go backwards?
As much as some Tory MPs insisted that there was no “vote lending” going on, the facts indisputably seem to prove otherwise.
There are at least five scenarios that would help explain what happened, and the truth could be a combination of all of them.
Cleverly supporters’ tactical voting backfires
The first, and most devastating possible scenario for Mr Cleverly, is that his supporters voted tactically for the candidate they thought he was most likely to beat in the head-to-head contest, but miscalculated spectacularly and overcompensated.
Advertisement
With an electorate of just 120 MPs, any tactical voting was always going to be risky, and it may be that with Mr Cleverly needing just two more votes on top of the 39 he received on Tuesday, his supporters assumed he had it in the bag and used their vote tactically without making sure at least 41 of their number were backing their man.
If this was the case, it would be a terrible failure on the part of Grant Shapps, the former MP and chairman of the Cleverly campaign, supposedly master of the spreadsheet, whose job it was to make sure this sort of thing could not happen.
It seems inconceivable that none of Mr Tugendhat’s supporters switched their allegiance to Mr Cleverly, who is politically closest to the shadow security minister, and it also seems impossible to imagine that any diehard Cleverly fans suddenly woke up on Wednesday and decided they would switch to one of the Right-wing candidates.
Advertisement
Advertisement : 1 sec
One Cleverly-supporting MP said: “Clearly a lot of people took it upon themselves to play these kinds of tactics, which in a small electorate can go very badly wrong. Quite a few colleagues who voted for other candidates will now be wondering what on Earth they have done.
“It was an inherent danger of coming first by such a wide margin in the third ballot – some people, off their own bat, decided to influence who came second, with disastrous results. What I do know is that no games were played by the core Cleverly team. We were very clear – no games. If you want Cleverly, vote Cleverly.”
James Heappey, the former Armed Forces minister, agreed, saying: “Some people have tried to be too clever today.”
Badenoch supporters lent fake support to Cleverly in third round
The second possible scenario is that Mr Cleverly’s support was over-represented in Tuesday’s ballot because of tactical voting by supporters of Mr Jenrick and Mrs Badenoch.
Advertisement
Polling by the Conservative Home website suggests that Mrs Badenoch would have beaten Mr Cleverly in a head-to-head vote, where party members make up the electorate rather than MPs, and so her supporters may well have voted for Mr Cleverly on Tuesday in the hope that he would build up enough momentum to get to the final two.
Careerist MPs, the theory goes, would have backed Mr Cleverly in the belief that he was going to win and so they had better hitch their cart to his horse to ensure a plum shadow Cabinet job.
When it got to Wednesday’s vote, however, Badenoch supporters needed to ensure that their woman got through, and switched to the person they actually backed, explaining why Mr Cleverly’s vote went down.
Jenrick backers try to scupper Cleverly’s campaign
Scenario number three – by far the most complex – involves Mr Jenrick’s backers boosting Mr Cleverly’s vote in the previous round for their own reasons.
Advertisement
One reason for doing this would be that, as in scenario two, they wanted to get him into the final two.
But it is also possible that they wanted to lull Cleverly backers into a false sense of security – thus encouraging scenario one – and/or spook Right-wingers into backing Mr Jenrick because of the very real possibility that Mr Cleverly might win if he got to the final two, rather than playing the role of the fall guy as they had previously expected.
The fact that Mr Jenrick had two fewer supporters on Tuesday than he had in the previous round, before bouncing back on Wednesday, would certainly seem to suggest that some Jenrick votes were “lent” to Mr Cleverly.
The Right unites
Scenario four involves Mr Jenrick’s backers – and possibly some of Mrs Badenoch’s – being so worried by Mr Cleverly’s recent surge in the polls that one or other of their supporters voted tactically to make sure the other had enough votes to get the final two, believing that Mr Cleverly now represented the biggest threat and had to be eliminated.
If this scenario were true, it would suggest that either Mr Jenrick or Mrs Badenoch had so many supporters that they could afford to lend their Right-wing rival enough votes to shut out Mr Cleverly.
Some MPs believe that the Right of the party united and shared their votes between Mr Jenrick and Mrs Badenoch in a coordinated “stop Cleverly” campaign to make sure that the next leader is from the Right, even if it is not their first choice of leader.
One veteran Tory MP said: “MPs were surprised and shocked by the third ballot result and realised that the idea we should go back to continuity Rishi was not the answer. It was a question of the party uniting to find a solution to Reform.”
Tugendhat vote splits
The fifth and final scenario involves Mr Tugendhat’s supporters. What happened to those 20 votes that were back in play after he was knocked out on Tuesday?
Some of Mr Tugendhat’s supporters undoubtedly switched directly to one of the two Right-wing candidates. They included Nick Timothy, who publicly declared he was moving his vote to Mr Jenrick, as he had privately said he would do all along, simply because Mr Jenrick was his second choice after Mr Tugendhat.
That would explain some, but not all, of the extra votes for Mr Jenrick and Mrs Badenoch, who between them gained 22 votes – two more than the 20 that had gone to Mr Tugendhat in the previous round.
Ultimately, none of the candidates has emerged the clear winner, with just five votes separating first and last place – meaning the race is wide open as it heads into the final straight.
Message Thread | This response ↓
The posts made on this board are the opinions of the people posting them and do not always reflect the opinion of the board administration.