This was the plot twist nobody expected. There was an audible gasp inside Room 14 on the House of Commons’ famous old committee corridor at 3.30pm on Wednesday when James Cleverly, the front-runner, was knocked out of the race to be the next leader of the Conservative Party.
Just 24 hours previously he had burst to the front of the pack as the party’s 121 MPs voted in the penultimate elimination round to whittle down the contenders.
Cleverly, the conventional wisdom said, had “won” the party’s annual conference and made the best impression. The centrist had the gravitas, the momentum, and the only thing left to be decided was which of his right-wing opponents – Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick – would be voted by Tory MPs to join him in the final pairing to make their pitch to members.
So much for conventional wisdom. Almost unbelievably, Cleverly contrived to finish last of the three, and Badenoch and Jenrick will now face off in a poll of the membership throughout October.
Following each of the last three MP votes, each contender had taken a turn to be the assumed favourite, and each had in turn been cast back down the pecking order as another usurped them.
“Never trust a Tory MP,” said a wise old member of Westminster’s press gallery as journalists tried to absorb the result. Tory MPs were going around on Wednesday evening saying exactly the same thing.
So what happened? The most popular theory among Tory politicians in the immediate aftermath of the vote was that some supporters of Cleverly, complacent in their belief that their man was guaranteed a spot in the final two, chose of their own accord to “lend” their votes to other candidates on a freelance basis in a botched attempt to rig who his final opponent might be.
Barring a three-way tie, 40 votes were needed in the final round of MP votes to make it through. Cleverly had 39 in the penultimate round, Badenoch 30 and Jenrick 31. It was assumed most of the other centrist Tom Tugendhat’s 20 backers would go to Cleverly, leaving the other two in a dogfight.
Yet on Wednesday afternoon, Cleverly fell back to 37, Jenrick pipped home with 41 and Badenoch, a livewire candidate who many now see as the favourite given her popularity with grassroots, got 42.
In hindsight, there were signs in the afternoon that suggested Cleverly may have suspected his progression in the race was not a done deal. At 1.30pm, at exactly the same time voting started, The Irish Times spotted him looking flushed and nervous as he stepped into a corridor just off the colonnade that runs along one side of parliament’s New Palace Yard.
“Have you guys eaten?” said Cleverly, his eyes darting as he also puffed out his cheeks in a sure sign of tension. His two companions – Tory MP and Cleverly-backer Gagan Mohindra, and a woman with her back turned – urged him to go ahead and get something quick himself.
“I had salad,” said the unrecognised woman, presumably a Tory MP. Instead of salad, if Cleverly’s camp had thrown more red meat to the right-wing Tory base, perhaps their man would have prevailed.
Later, a source in Jenrick’s camp admitted that on Tuesday night they feared their man might be beaten. “There was a moment of real nerves overnight,” said the source.
Yet, it is now Badenoch the culture warrior versus Jenrick, who wants Britain to quit the European Convention on Human Rights, who will fight it out.
The Tory party’s lurch even further to the right is confirmed.
Perhaps the real winner of Wednesday’s vote was neither of the Tory two, but rather Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party that had feared the centrist Cleverly the most.
