Women's and Equalities Select Committee

[ArabellaSaurus]

Welcomes Nadia Whittome, Kim Leadbetter, and Kevin McKenna.

This is very, very bad news for women.

https://x.com/CommonsWEC/status/1983110894835130644

I think Kemi (and maybe Starmer?) is safe until May because everyone assumes the May elections will be so horrible, she might as well get to take ownership before a new leader comes in.

Of course there might not be much of a party left after May.

I'm more bearish on Jenrick for a couple of reasons. One is that he does really badly in focus groups. Another is that he's trying to appeal to the right after spending most of his career as a wet, but that just means nobody really trusts him, and people who might support him keep defecting to Reform.

I've heard from reliable sources in Reform that they've turned down 18 MPs who wanted to defect, and it wouldn't surprise me if Jenrick has been blacklisted. The secret Afghan resettlement scheme, which he was up to his neck in as immigration minister, would be reason enough to keep him out.

David Starkey likes Jenrick, I'll give him that, but I'm not sure appealing to David Starkey is the road to electoral success.

I still think Cleverly is the man to beat.

If the Tories are crushed in May again Kemi will be in a very difficult position. It is likely the knives will come out. Yet the Tories also know changing leader all the time is part of their problem. If they are going to change though 2026 is the sweet spot as it gives 2 to 3 years before a General election. 2027 will be too late.

Internal Tory politics is a minefield. The thing is in a leadership ballot amongst members a more right leaning candidate will always have a big edge. I can see Cleverly getting some support from Tory Mps then running into issues amongst members.

Latest internal survey show Jenrick has a lot of support but Chris Philp, and Mel Stride do as well. Both of them might be contenders too.
https://conservativehome.com/2025/10/17/shadow-cabinet-league-table-huge-badenoch-bounce-post-conference/

Philp is a solid performer.

One of the problems with Stride is that he's got a tiny majority, though a lot of his colleagues are in the same boat.

I weirdly keep forgetting Mel Stride is the shadow chancellor. He's kind of emblematic of the fact that you can climb the Tory greasy pole just by being around a long time, not making enemies, and having party grandees vouch for you being a good bloke.

Every time I come across mention of Philp he's being gently mocked for ineffectual, inarticulate shoutiness. Jenrick would be a mistake, he doesn't come across as likeable and the makeover just adds to the impression of slippery insincerity. He's also demonstrably corrupt. Based on the interview he gave when he was running last time I'd also say he's not very bright.
Cleverly is more congenial, but if he can't even game a leadership ballot without coming acropper...

I think the Johnson purge was disastrous for the Tories and that it will be difficult for them to re-establish themselves as the party of business and sound economics whilst the Brexit brigade holds sway. Hard to remember that at the time of the referendum the majority of the Cabinet and ordinary Tory backbenchers supported continuing EU membership. The party is now dominated by people who don't have even the most rudimentary grasp of economics or don't care because their wealth insulates them and/or they're raging xenophobes.

The weird thing about the Tories is that they have a history of a right wing membership and a liberal parliamentary party.

These days the MPs are all pretending to be right wing, because that's what the polls tell them is popular, but the right wing members have mostly gone elsewhere, so they probably have a bigger proportion of de facto Lib Dems in the membership than they've ever had.

If they're reduced to a small regional rump after the next election, I wouldn't rule out the Lib Dems gobbling them up, like the Tories did with the old Liberal Unionists.

We're always being told the the UK Tory Party is the most successful political party in the Western world, I don't think it's disappearing anytime soon.

I suppose institutions rarely disappear completely. The Liberal Party should really have wound itself up in 1951, but inertia kept it sort of alive until Jeremy Thorpe (of all people!) could give it a new shot of energy.

I think there are two possible outcomes for the Tories in 2029. They could have 80 to 100 seats and still be able to present themselves as a national party. Or they could have 20 to 40 seats and be a regional rump fighting it out with the Lib Dems in the stockbroker belt.

Which outcome happens is a very fine line. It could come down to one or two points in the polls, good or bad candidate selection, and dumb luck.

Fair enough, @SionnachRuadh , if there's one thing we've learnt, it's that predictions are increasingly more difficult in this rapidly-changing world. I'd have thought the Tories should be capable of clawing a few seats back in Scotland, after the antics of the SNP, and Labour in Scotland being nowhere much?

@moto748e I am not Mystic Meg, and it would be foolish to predict anything with confidence!