What’s not being talked about in the Tory leadership election

We know what’s being talked about in the Tory leadership election. First, second and third, tax cuts. Fourth, making ‘a new start’ (which is code for scandals under Johnson). Fifth, how to stop Rishi Sunak.

What’s not being talked about, though, is much more interesting. First, the British high street. We all know the British high street is in crisis. Banks and post offices are closing, small shops are struggling to compete with supermarkets and online shopping, churches are closing (see below). Supermarkets themselves are changing beyond recognition with new card machines replacing tellers which saves supermarket chains money and is fine for young people used to computers but is harder for elderly people and, more important, deprives lonely people of much-needed company. It is hard to see how these changes can be reversed, they are mostly driven by the insatiable need for banks and the post office to make profits and the onward march of new technology. These are huge changes.

One part of this change is the larger change in towns, particularly coastal towns from Hornsea in Yorkshire to Great Yarmouth in East Anglia and south to Poole and St. Leonards. Instead of being charming coastal resorts these have become dumping grounds for the desperately poor, especially the sick and the elderly, full of charity shops, bingo parlours, tattoo parlours and mobility scooters.

This new townscape and these huge changes have hardly been mentioned in the leadership election. Nor has the recent transformation of The Church of England. This is partly a matter of ideology. The C of E has been a liberal institution for years. Now it’s yet another establishment bastion of the new woke ideology. Our bishops are curiously uninterested in the huge numbers of Christians being persecuted in huge swathes of the post-colonial world, from central Africa to the Middle East.

But in addition to this ideological shift is the decline of local churches starved of funds and parishioners. The Church of England is supposed to be one of the central British institutions, part of the ancien régime , but apart from royal weddings and funerals and Thought for the Day, the Church has almost disappeared from our political discourse and has certainly no presence in the current leadership election. What do bishops have to say about what kind of government we should have and what should be its priorities and what do leading Conservative politicians have to say about the parlous state of the Church of England and its gloomy future?

Since the days of the Bishop of Durham pontificating about the Virgin birth and Robert Runcie attacking Mrs. Thatcher, the Church has largely vanished from our political discourse and the front pages. But surely the decline of the Church of England, the uncertainty about the monarchy after the Queen’s imminent death and the possible break-up of the United Kingdom, if Scotland votes to leave in the next referendum, all pose questions about British identity which the leadership contenders have largely ignored. Perhaps party members and activists will be more concerned than backbenchers obsessed with taxes and re-elections.

The third absence is the most striking of all. Under Boris Johnson, the Conservatives won a landslide victory in 2019, their first since Mrs. Thatcher’s three victories (1979-1987). This was largely attributed to Brexit and Boris Johnson’s personality, his extraordinary ability to reach voters in areas beyond the Conservative heartlands, voters that Theresa May, David Cameron and his predecessors in the 1990s and 2000s couldn’t hope to reach.

So surely the new leadership election should have focused on which candidate could hope to emulate the success of Mrs. Thatcher and Boris Johnson, the only Tory Prime Ministers since the 1950s who could speak to these voters and win between thirteen and fourteen million votes, between 42-44% of the vote. And yet backbenchers have gone on about taxes and a safe pair of hands. As I write Rishi Sunak (Winchester, Oxford and Stanford Business School) and Liz Truss (Roundhay School, Leeds and Oxford) are two of the leading candidates. Both had major jobs under Johnson, Sunak as Chancellor and Truss as Foreign Secretary.

There are signs of a vote for change with the increasing popularity of Penny Mordaunt and the really surprising candidate, Kemi Badenoch. Neither went to Oxford, Mordaunt was the first member of her family to attend university and was the first woman to serve as minister of defence. If elected Badenoch would be only the third female Prime Minister and the first non-white Prime Minister.

There is a sign of a change of generations, of course. Johnson, Gove and May are all between their mid-50s and mid-60s whereas the four leading contenders according to the latest polls are all in their 40s, with Sunak and Badenoch almost twenty years younger than Johnson.

But which of these would speak to Red Wall Britain or Basildon Man? All four are from the Tory south. So is Johnson, of course, but he had the personality and energy which allowed him to speak to all voters , whether at Carmelli’s bakery in Golders Green or a fishmonger in Hull. Could the leading candidates to succeed him? Really? And why hasn’t that given the Tory backbenchers pause for thought?

Steady as she goes, as Badenoch said in a recent speech, isn’t the most compelling line when so many people yearn for change after 12 years in office. Even the most successful governments have started to look like extinct volcanoes after a decade in office. Thatcher ruled for 11 years from 1979-90, Blair for 10 from 1997-2007, Brown was Chancellor and then Prime Minister from 1997-2010. By the end all had just outstayed their welcome. Blair looked like a fresh face compared to Thatcher and Major, Cameron and Clegg looked so young compared to Brown. Now again there is a feeling in the nation that it is time for a change and this could leave the door open for Mordaunt or even Badenoch.

On the other hand, as Sunak said, an economic and health crisis and the worst war in Europe since the Balkans is not the time “to learn on the job”. Don’t we need someone who has been Chancellor or Foreign Secretary rather than more inexperienced figures? That seems to be the way Tory MPs are leaning. But are they really in touch with the nation? They don’t look it or sound it. All those red-faced, middle aged men in suits going on and on about tax cuts sound as out of touch with ordinary voters as Thatcher sounded when she went on about the poll tax.

That’s why they are not talking about the high street or the changing face of our national institutions, the terrible state of so many of our state schools, universities and hospitals, the problems of crime and immigration. They are not even talking about the culture wars that exasperate so many Tory and other voters. Badenoch is, and this is why when it comes to the hustings she might seem more relevant than Sunak and Truss. Badenoch and Sunak are the same age, but he seems much more like a corporate figure in a suit than she does. She seems ten years younger. Partly because he had to keep the public finances afloat during Covid and the subsequent economic crisis, partly because she senses it is time for a change.

The basic question should be not who Tory MPs think is a safer bet, but which candidate will keep Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner awake at night. Surely the answer is neither Rishi Sunak nor Liz Truss.

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