Rishi Sunak is doing the right thing by staying on during Tory “madness”
Sam Lister, Daily Express' Political Editor, comments on the long process ahead of electing a new Conservative leader on The Division Bell podcast.
On the 2nd of November we will get a new Tory leader and Sam admits: “It is quite astonishing that it is going to take that long!”
John Stevens, Political Editor of The Mirror said: “They finally decided the rules of the contest. So, on Monday nominations will close and MPs basically need to get the backing of 10 fellow MPs in order to be nominated.”
“Then, they will get whittled down by MPs holding ballots ahead of party conference in October.”
Mel Stride and Tom Tugendhat are predicted to be the centrist candidates along with Robert Jenrick and Priti Patel from the right.
John joked that “people talk about how it'll be a ‘beauty parade’ although that may not be the case with some people in the race…”
“Maybe I'm being unkind.” John admitted.
Once the four candidates have all made their case to the Tory MPs, they are narrowed down to two and the leader is announced on 2nd November.
John asked Sam: “Do you think this is the most sensible way of doing things?”
“No, and neither do a lot of Conservatives!”
She revealed: “My phone started pinging last night as soon as the rules were announced. People are deeply frustrated from different parts of the party for different reasons.”
Sam said: “I think this has got huge potential to end in disaster.”
“What we have here is a really long, drawn-out process which I think, as I’ve said before on this podcast, personally, is a mistake!”
Sam revealed that she thinks by dragging out finding a new leader, “all you’re doing is airing your dirty linen in public!”
“Months of Torys basically fighting other Torys, after years of division, is really not what the public want to see.”
One point of contention is that the candidates will not hold hustings for actual members.
One person involved in a potential candidate’s team told Sam that: “they think this is a way of certain people avoiding proper scrutiny.”
Sam relayed how: “those candidates that may trip up when tested by the members will basically manage to avoid that process so all they have to do is convince the MPs.”
Sam said: “At the end of that process, the membership might all be really behind one candidate and think ‘X is the one for me’ but then after that the MPs whittle down four to two.”
“The grassroots favourite may not even be on that shortlist! So, when it comes to voting they have only got a choice of two and it might not be the person they want. ”
John agreed that there does seem to be some “discrepancy that you show off these four candidates to members and then say you can't vote on two of them.”
Sam revealed that “One person said to me it's ‘madness’ and apparently there were even more crazy plans but this was the most sensible of the options!”
