The Conservative Leadership 2: Eyes on 2025
The mystery of the 2022 Tory Leadership election is not whether Liz Truss will defeat Rishi Sunak but why anyone ever thought he was a good candidate. And what comes next
Overview
The consensus in British Conservative circles is that the leadership race between Foriegn Secretary Elizabeth Truss and Chancellor Rishi Sunak is all but over. Sunak, who never led in a single poll of the 160,000 strong party membership, has seen the gap between himself and Truss grow to beyond a 2-1 margin in polls.
The polls are perhaps a less indicative portrayal of the state of the race than the behavior of Conservative MPs. There has been a steady stream of MPs moving towards endorsing Truss, most prominently Penny Mordaunt, who came third in the leadership race. These endorsements have come not from the Right of the party, where the few major figures who declined to back Truss have so far held out(fourth place finisher Kemi Badenoch’s silence has caused particular consternation for Team Truss) but from the Center and even Left of the party. Tom Tugendhat, seen as the most anti-Boris candidate endorsed Truss, as did West Midlands Mayor Andy Street, the highest ranking Tory outside of Westminster. The latter was surprising as Street had only days before blamed Brexit for the deteriorating economic situation. Even Savid Javid, who joined Rishi Sunak in the dual resignation which brought down Boris Johnson has endorsed Truss. It is hard to deny that these endorsements represent at least in part an effort to join the winning side.
It would be an error to ascribe all of these endorsements to political opportunism. To do so would be to confuse causation with correlation. The breadth of Liz Truss’ appeal within the party when it comes with endorsements is actually a reflection to exactly how limited Rishi Sunak’s own appeal is. Rishi Sunak is losing MPs for the same reason he is losing the membership. He is failing to offer either group a realistic plan to win the next election or reassurance he would be a better PM.
It is hard to overstate just how bad Rishi Sunak’s campaign has been. Sunak was always going to be facing an uphill race against Truss who positioned herself to his Right, always an advantage with the membership, and who tarred him as Boris Johnson’s assassin. But Sunak managed to neutralize his own advantages over the course of the campaign. Rather than creating a choice between competence, effective economic management, and a broad appeal in a general election with immaturity, fantasy economics, and a narrow ideological agenda, Sunak has created the impression that his policies would pose a greater electoral risk to the party, and that he would oversee a narrower and more dysfunctional government than one containing Nadine Dories, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and David Frost. When a “realist” foreign policy voice like Tugendhat finds Truss’ commitments on defense spending more appealing than Rishi’s “pragmatism” something has gone wrong.
Liz Truss’ team deserve credit for running a disciplined operation, for hiring debate coaches who helped their candidate play to her strengths, and for highlighting her more popular surrogates, even when they lacked close relations to the candidate, and hiding those seen as controversial.
Nonetheless, Rishi Sunak has lost this election more than Liz Truss has run it. The result is that neither her ideas nor her team have been tested, either in terms of their appeal to the party or the wider public. Her inner circle appear aware of this, demonstrated by an insecurity about Kemi Badenoch’s refusal to commit herself which they seem to see as a lack of respect. This betrays a fear that the implosion of Rishi Sunak means that Liz Truss will lack a genuine mandate either personally or ideologically even if she wins by a 3-1 margin, and that will leave her, and more importantly, them, vulnerable. Especially in the event of a 2024 defeat at the hands of Labour.
The Sunak Campaign
It was widely believed going into this leadership contest that while Rishi Sunak labored under a number of disadvantages regarding his image with the party membership, these were compensated for by a disciplined campaign operation. Evidence to the contrary during the initially phases of the leadership campaign, such as Sunak’s lethargic performance with MPs were ascribed not to any lack of support, but rather “dark arts” by Sunak’s whip, Gavin Williamson, who had performed a similar function for Theresa May and then Boris Johnson in 2016 and 2019. Confirmation was seen in candidates such as Jeremy Hunt hitting the 20 votes needed to make the first round, only to fall short of that(18 votes in the case of Hunt) on the first ballot. When things which would be expected to occur if Rishi were gaming the system did not occur - such as Kemi Badenoch gaining substantially on Liz Truss in round 4 or Sunak having more than enough votes in the final round to chose his opponent(137 to Truss’ 113 and Mordaunt’s 105) it was assumed there must be some sort of plan beyond the conception of observers. After all, Rishi was a hyper-competent banker with a slick operation. He must have a plan.
Doubt began to set-in for me with the release of a video featuring Sunak’s reaction to making the final ballot. This unalloyed joy was discordant with an outcome that was never in doubt(Sunak finishing first among MPs) or that it merely advanced him to a contest in which he was a clear underdog. Every impression was given that Sunak genuinely believed that this was a personal triumph. Either Sunak genuinely believed that and was delusional, or he was so invested in corporate BS that he felt it advantageous to lie to his staff’s faces and release the video of it. If they believed it, then it spoke poorly of him.
The Sunak campaign clearly envisioned a long-game. Aided by a rule change which allowed Tory Members to change already returned postal ballots online up until the final moments, Team Sunak decided to bet everything on Liz Truss imploding under the spotlight. This expectation was aided by Truss’ poor performance in the first debate where only 6% of respondents indicated they believed she won. That this line was echoed by no less a source than the Spectator which declared Truss the big loser of the first debate must have confirmed these views.
If there was one common error that extended across everything Team Sunak did it was to believe the conventional wisdom
They believed their candidate was a vastly more appealing and charismatic debater than Liz Truss and therefore concluded that such things as strategy or message was irrelevant. In doing so, they repeated the error of the Mordaunt campaign on a greater scale.
They believed that the media’s frame of the economic positions of the candidates - Rishi Sunak as the candidate of responsible fiscal administration, holding off on tax cuts which the country could not afford, raising corporate rates as a whole while allowing investment to be deducted - Liz Truss as the candidate of fantasy economics. As a consequence they do not seem to have ever bothered to focus group these arguments.
The result was that when the first debate occurred on Monday, July 26th, it was a fiasco for Team Rishi, one he has never recovered from. Truss managed to frame Rishi Sunak’s supposed strength, caution, as a weakness, an unwillingness to take risks when the country was in crisis, and framed the choice as between Truss who might spend money the UK did not have to relieve energy bills which have nearly doubled amidst double-digit inflation, and Sunak who would do nothing.
This frame was vitally important for the constituency on which Sunak had rested all of his hopes. Sunak had little chance of winning over the members on his own, but if local councilors and Conservative MPs, who clearly had serious reservations about Truss(who after all won the support of a mere 31% of MPs) lobbied their constituencies in favor of the idea that Sunak was the best bet of the party winning the next election Sunak might prevail.
The frame that Truss succeeded in adopting cut at the heart of this appeal. It was not those suffering a cost of living crisis who Truss was offering immediate relief. It was Tory MPs and Councilors who feared for their seats. Faced with the prospect of angry constituents freezing this winter, Rishi Sunak offered them nothing other than the possibility that if he alienated the entire electorate over the winter of 2022-2023 he might have enough money for tax cuts and stimulus in 2024 to somehow bounce back. It is easy to see how a strategy which involved crashing the party’s poll ratings in the short-term could come off as a higher risk option than excessive spending from Team Truss.
Having lost his credentials as the less risky choice on economics, Sunak promptly proceeded to shred whatever credibility he retained on other issues with a cycle of pandering which reached cringeworthy levels yesterday with the release of a video in which Sunak dumps EU laws into a shredder. Not only was this ineffective - Sunak cannot erase months of positioning as less extreme than Truss on the Northern Ireland protocol and culture war issues, but it created the impression of desperation. When Sunak promised to look at the handling of sexual content in the schools, Truss could not even be bothered enough to match the bid.
Figuring out why there has been a flood of endorsements towards Liz Truss from all sides is not hard. At this point it is hard to see why anyone would support Rishi Sunak.
He is not going to win
It looks like he would be a weaker general election candidate
His initial economic policy appears riskier
He has in any event dropped all of his initial policies
His campaign has been subject to a series of gaffes which seem designed to damage the party as a whole by painting it as hostile to working class voters by displaying contempt for the poor.
Liz Truss
Where does this leave the campaign of the likely to be next-PM? Liz Truss is a highly unusual figure. Not in terms of her political journey from Liberal Democrat to Tory Modernizer to Remainer, to Brexiteer and culture warrior extraordinaire. That is relatively common, especially among the more successful state-educated Conservative politicians. Lord David Frost is another example of an individual who followed a similar trajectory over the last few years. What is more surprising is that she is approaching the top job without a clear faction of her own. Theresa May was very much the typical shire Tory. Hard on immigration. Small-C conservative in outlook. Cameron was the personification of his clique. Truss, up until a few weeks ago, was merely the best the Right could do. They could not get one of their own into contention, as evidenced by Priti Patel’s failure to make the ballot and the defeat of Sualla Braverman, and Kemi Badenoch, who perhaps could have become PM is increasingly viewed as too independent-minded by a Tory Right who distrust anyone with too many ideas of their own. That left Liz Truss who was willing to mouth other people’s words and ideas her entire career.
What does stand out is how lucky Truss has been.
Her promotion as the first female Lord Chancellor under Theresa May was not seen as a success.
Boris seems to have advanced her last year largely as a counter-weight to Rishi Sunak. With Sunak fading, Boris already seemed to be turning on her this spring, cutting her out of Ukraine policy and setting her up for a no-win situation on Northern Ireland.
Her own behavior during the crucial 36hrs which brought down Boris Johnson appeared a whirlwind of ill-advised decision-making. First, she reportedly bid with Nadhim Zahawi for the doubly poisoned chalice of a Chancellorship which would have marked her with opportunism had she seized it, and left her responsible for not doing the job had she subsequently run for leader. Having failed to secure it, she then boarded a 20hr flight to Indonesia for a summit, knowing that the following day would see a move, potentially decisive against Johnson. Having justified her absence to both supporters of Johnson and and his opponents as a matter of national security given the crisis over Ukraine and her role as Foriegn Secretary, she had no issue with abandoning the summit and immediately flying back leaving the UK all but unrepresented after.
Her performance in the first debate was widely seen as abysmal with only 6% believing she performed best. Her initial strength among MPs was limited.
How then did Truss turn this around such that she became the presumptive next PM, and may well be headed to as much as a 3-1 victory over Sunak?
Sunak’s errors are almost certainly part of it. Truss’ team has been quick to exploit them. Critically, Truss managed to make her liabilities a strength, painting her willing to promise big as risk-taking, and Sunak’s attacks as excess caution. By tying this line of attack to a nation and party in crisis, she was able to paint herself as the leader most willing to act.
Sunak’s effort to paint himself as the conservative candidate placed him, ironically, to the Left of Truss, never a place one wants to be, as did his move against Boris. Even if it was an act of self-preservation, Tory members are so used to seeing attacks on Boris as attacks on Brexit, the Leave-voting Sunak found himself marked as a closet-Remainer.
Truss also improved substantially in the subsequent debates. She will never be a charismatic speaker, but she clearly studied the one exchange she did defeat Sunak in during that difficult first debate, when she responded to his almost smug inquiry “Liz, you have been both a Liberal Democrat and a Remainer, which do you regret most?” with an appeal to her state educated background against Sunak, the former head boy at Winchester. In the first two-candidate debate, Sunak spoke for perhaps 70% of the time, often interrupting both Truss and the moderator, but it was her words which counted, staying on message in portraying Sunak as a risk-adverse prisoner of conventional wisdom.
This discipline is an understated advantage. Penny Mordaunt had perhaps the most favorable constellation of forces imaginable in the first week of the Tory leadership contest. Had her team managed to maintain message discipline, and the candidate accomplished the same during the two debates, Mordaunt would likely be the presumptive Prime Minister. She was unable to do so.
By contrast, Truss is succeeding not because her message is particular strong. It is serviceable. She is succeeding because she has managed to stick to it consistently integrating it into every issue. That she is the the risk-taking candidate and Rishi is the risk-adverse one is not just an attack. It is an argument for why she will do more for the cost of living crisis even absent policy choices, why she is the “candidate of hope”, why she will do more for schools, on foreign policy, or a host of issues. Voters can trust her to try something.
Liz Truss as the personification of a class of Politician
Finally, Elizabeth Truss has never been a person as much as a product and vehicle. Those who felt that her history should have been an obstacle to becoming the candidate of the “Right” misunderstand the internal politics of the Conservative party. Brexit has created an entirely new class of politician who would not have existed without it. Ideological Brexiteers existed before Brexit, and they included ironically Rishi Sunak, as well Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings on the modernizing side, but it also was a vehicle to relevance for those who had never held political relevance and would not have without it. Someone like Jacob Rees-Mogg or David Frost, the latter of whom like Truss backed Remain in the referendum, would never have become influential public figures without the Brexit issue legitimizing what had been a fringe wing of the Tory party, and without the chaos of the May years removing dozens of Tory MPs with Ministerial experience more senior. Truss as one of Cameron’s A-listers would have risen, but she was already at risk of stalling before the referendum. The Johnson purges of Fall 2019 made possible the ascension of this group.
For this group, Brexit matters less as a policy than as a set of conditions which are a prerequisite to their existence. Without it, they fear a resurgence of the traditional elite of the Conservative party. It is this, more than ideology that led them to stick with Johnson. Johnson too, as a liberal London Mayor was not innately a man of the Right, but he would never have gotten close to the Premiership without Brexit.
Johnson’s fall was an existential threat to this group insofar as his replacement with someone outside would mark the end of their careers. More than anything else, the dividing line between Kemi Badenoch, who was backed by Michael Gove, and Liz Truss, backed by much of Johnson’s personal following, was one between those who had been prominent and successful despite their support for Brexit and rightwing positions, and those who are prominent only because of their timely embrace of such. The opportunists had as much to fear from the ascension of the ideological “real deal” as from the triumph of their personal(Rishi Sunak) opponent, or ideological enemy.
In many ways this explains not only why these individuals rallied to Team Truss, because her career is intrinsically linked to theirs, but how they approached the other candidates. Despite representing the “Left” of the party, Tom Tugendhat endangers no hostility and can be considered for high office because his faction has lost, knows it has lost, and is willing to join the coalition under their leadership. Tugendhat offers them something more important than agreement. He offers respect and deference.
By contrast Rishi Sunak and even Kemi Badenoch represented something more dangerous as it was more adjacent. Sunak’s competence pitch was always aimed more at MPs than it was at members or the wider public. The pitch was implicitly an attack not just on Johnson but the “sort” who surrounded him. Sunak promised not to remove Johnson, but the entire Johnson clique, and the dividing line at elite levels is not ideologically, Dominic Raab for instance is hard-right, but competence and background. Raab who was a successful international lawyer as opposed to Suella Braverman who received her QC with her job as Attorney General. It was a pitch not for merit-based policy, but for a policy of promoting MPs on merit, not personal solicitousness.
As for Kemi Badenoch, the division appears to function as a movement for those who are on the “Right” for ideological and intellectual reasons, versus those who mouthed platitudes because it was advantageous. As noted, Liz Truss’ Brexiteer backers are generally those who could never have hoped for ministerial office or prominence if Remain had won the referendum. Much of Kemi’s circle is made up of those who could have expected Ministerial advancement even under a Cameron or Osborne government despite their support for the idea of Brexit and opposition to many of the values and policies Cameron and Osborne held dear.
This, ironically, makes Kemi and her supporters a much greater threat to Team Truss than Sunak. Sunak’s pitch was always aimed at MPs, who will almost certainly be cowed into loyalty by his defeat, not to mention the poor campaign he ran. Yet, the very victory of Team Truss, will redouble the resentment many of the more talented and able on the “Right” felt against perceived mediocrities and opportunists around Johnson. Kemi, as the prospective next leader, if, as seems probable, the Conservatives lose in 2024, would likely move to exclude those individuals from prominence if only to make room for younger and more able MPs.
While Kemi has finally made a de facto endorsement of Truss this weekend, the delay was noted by Truss surrogates some of whom provided highly negative quotes to the Guardian of all papers.
Truss seems to have forced the issue of an endorsement by guaranteeing the offer of a senior position to Badenoch, but the awkwardness is evidence of how late it came and the tensions have not been erased between their respective surrogates.
This likely explains the rising prominence of Penny Mordaunt as a Truss surrogate. While Truss was a far more acceptable choice this time around as Penny(who did back Leave) lacked preexisting links) Mordaunt lacks the personal or ideological hostility. Expect Mordaunt to be given a prominent role and built up as Truss’ de facto No2 in preparation for a worst case 2025 leadership race against Kemi.