Conservative Party (UK) leadership election, 2022, Take Two

[CumbrianLefty]

Morduant clearly struggling - blew her big chance last time round it would seem.

[CumbrianLefty]

Would the times endorse Labour? They did so in 2001 iirc

Since around 2010 the British press have been more ideologically right wing/partisan Conservative than they were in the past. The Times might endorse Labour in the current climate, but in an election close enough for things like that to matter they probably wouldn’t.

Quick guide for non-British forum members on the partisan allegiance of the British press:
The Mirror - Partisan Labour.
The Guardian - Labour, but more than anything ‘not Conservative’ progressive types.
The Financial Times - Fairly liberal, will probably endorse Labour especially against a Boris/Truss type PM.
The Times - Might endorse Labour if things don’t significantly change, essentially the last ‘respectable’ centre-right paper left.
The Sun - Previously backed Blair, but has been pretty avowedly Conservative since.
Daily Express - Backed Blair in 2001, but very much the pensioner Pravda that would only abandon the Conservatives for a credible further right option these days.
Daily Mail - Obviously Conservative, would happily endorse them even in a snap election right now.
Daily Telegraph - See above.

I can certainly see the Sun not backing the Tories next time, even if a Labour endorsement a la 1997 may be a bridge too far. There's also the Independent if you count the now only online operation - it is certainly not going to back the Tories (doing so in 2015 effectively killed off the paper version)

[CumbrianLefty]

Baker is a practising Christian and quite big on "morality" stuff.

[CumbrianLefty]

The BBC being BoJo's totally uncritical client yesterday with the utterly evidence free "100 MPs" claim was yet another in the sizeable recent series of low points for their politics coverage.

[CumbrianLefty]

Hypothetical polls are unreliable at the best of times, but even more so now given that it is very likely that one of the things boosting the Johnson score is nostalgia. The reality of him returning now would be nowhere near as rosy, and from the way lots of Tory MPs are going they at least recognise this.

[CumbrianLefty]

No slick launch video this time, a lot more restrained:

On that topic, Morduant just repeating her campaign video from the summer maybe adds to the sense that her heart isn't really in it this time (and perhaps was more fishing for a "big" job all along)

[CumbrianLefty]

You have to be careful with 'firsts' lists, I find.

A large number of female MPs of South Asian descent were elected in 2010, mostly Labour: as well as Patel (Gujarati via Uganda) there was Rushanara Ali (Bengali), Shabana Mahmood (Mirpuri), Yasmin Qureshi (Punjabi) and Valerie Vaz (Goan via Yemen).

It's also worth noting that Ashok Kumar (Langbaurgh/Middlesbrough South & East Cleveland 1991-92, 1997-2010) was from a Hindu background even if he was not religious himself. A little awkward as he wouldn't like to have been thought of in communal terms, but society is what it is and so on.

There were actually a few MPs of Asian extraction in the late 19th/early 20th C, weren't there.

[CumbrianLefty]

If we're discussing the electoral implications of Sunak's religion and ethnicity, then the issue won't be the Conservative Party's base, so much as the former BNP supporters that the party has chased with rather more determined enthusiasm than a lot of its own MPs entirely realize since May took over. These two groups are very, very different! The latter are a marginal group in most of the country, but there are significant concentrations in parts of the country with a lot of marginals in 2019. Of course many of those seats are probably gone anyway. Against that, he will almost certainly benefit in constituencies with substantial Hindu populations.

I think it's unpleasant to consider for Labour supporters but I strongly suspect that the segment of working class voters that moved from Labour to UKIP and, then, to the Tories will be more inclined to dislike Sunak due to his ethnicity than other swingy groups. Of course, they'd also hate him because he's extremely posh with no common touch and comes off as a liberal (doubt BNP types like this either). In this respect, he comes off as a (less charismatic) Tory Obama - seems like the perfect choice to guarantee that Labour wins Mansfield by at least a 10 point margin...

Johnson was posh too, foreign born, and boasted of his Turkish ancestors. I maintain that you have one section of the population who are overtly racist and they are a minority, but another who hates Sunak because of his microcultural background of Stanford, US Green Card, Indian moghul shoulder-rubber (could be any nationality). Johnson managed to tap in to a sense of Englishness and Britishness and the whole narrative that becoming PM of the United Kingdom was the greatest thing one could aspire too. Sunak is the soulless sovereign individual whose world is his oyster and for whom the job of Prime Minister of a bankrupt island is merely yet another stepping stone. The "globalist" slur (which is laughably being equated with anti-Semitism) is the key here - and why electorally he could lose that chunk of Labour -- > UKIP --> BoJo voters who aren't necessarily against a brown man or woman (cough Braverman) being PM.

In truth the term is a bit like "cultural Marxism" innit - not AS *in itself* but frequently used by those who *are*, and thus best avoided if at all possible.

If you want a term to cover the non-toxic aspects of "globalist", how about "supranationalist"?

[CumbrianLefty]

Luv performative civility - maybe this defines the "Times reading classes" most of all.

[CumbrianLefty]

Hmmm, you do suspect we aren't being told the full story don't you.

Not *totally* impossible that Johnson got the final nominations he needed by telling the MPs that he wasn't going to stand and it was all just for show. One thing is for sure - he *didn't* have the number required on Saturday afternoon, when the BBC et al reported as undisputed fact that he did.