Activate the leadership contest
Stating the obvious, but you can’t have a leadership contest until the previous prime minister resigns. This proved problematic with Boris Johnson, as he is so narcissistic and corrupt that he refused to step down long after most normal people would have realized the game was up. Once the leadership contenders realized there was no chance Johnson would resign of his own accord, it became a cat-and-mouse game to see who would move against him first. The downside of forcing him was that you risked looking unfaithful. The upside was that you could set the agenda and show that you had some moral principles. Not always an advantage in the Tory party. Sajid Javid and Rish at the event! did the dirty work by resigning within 10 minutes of each other on the evening of July 5th. They tried to claim that their resignations were not coordinated, but it seemed strange that both of them had prepared resignation letters. Rish! claimed to have resigned over a disagreement over economic policy, possibly over Johnson’s planned tax cuts. Which probably suggested he was totally fine with Johnson being a serial liar about Partygate and ignoring the repeated claims that the deputy chief whip was a sex parasite. However, we all have our point. Rishi Sunak is launching his campaign for the leadership of the Conservative party several months after first registering on the campaign website. Photo: Alberto Pezzali/AP
Make sure you’re in the country… or not
It was almost certainly no coincidence that Liz Truss, Rish!’s main rival, was away at a G20 foreign minister’s meeting in Indonesia when he handed in his resignation letter, thus giving him at least a two-day advantage over her. Truss flew straight from Indonesia without any of the other G19 ministers noticing he wasn’t there. That’s Global Britain for you. Fortunately for Liz, Johnson managed to hang on for a few days, even with more than 50 ministers quitting, so her own leadership campaign wasn’t too disruptive. And she could legitimately claim that she was the continuity candidate and had nothing to do with the coup against Johnson.
Create a campaign video
For laughs, if nothing else. No one could tell if Penny Mordaunt’s was a joke or meant to be taken seriously. Against a soundtrack of I Vow to Thee, My Country and a Little Britain, Mordaunt’s team took us on a journey around the English language. This included murderer Oscar Pistorius and murdered Labor MP Jo Cox. Rish! he chose to tell us a story and just put us to sleep. Truss took us on a tour of her Instagram account as she posed with other politicians in front of ever-larger union flags. Grant Shapps kept it short and sweet. He had no other message than the MPs: he would say anything to make them electable. Although, unfortunately, he could not become a chosen one. Tom Tugendhat just promised to be Johnson’s opposite, which was the kiss of death for his campaign. Nadhim Zahawi said he would release his tax returns – but only those he had not yet completed. No one knew what was in Suella Braverman’s house as no one saw it. Penny Mordaunt’s bid for leadership. Photo: Tolga Akmen/EPA
Remember to reserve space for the launch event
Grant Shapps and Rehman Chishti never managed to campaign before their leadership bids disappeared – a loss to satire if nothing else. In 2019, even Matt Hancock and Mark Harper had some sort of job. At Door Matt’s we were all given free phone chargers as campaign merchandise. fair enough, they didn’t work. Harper had just nine people in the room, four of whom were cartoonists. It was unclear whether Zahawi and Braverman actually had a launch, as they were given just five minutes to speak at the launch of a right-wing Tory pressure group, ConservativesWay Forward. Or backwards, more like. A woman passed out during Zahawi’s slot. The chancellor for the next few weeks pretended not to notice and just kept talking. Oks.
If you book a room, make sure it has air conditioning
Javid and Mordaunt both closed a small, airless private dining room in Westminster. Javid broke into a sweat before he even began to speak. Not the strongest selling point for launching a campaign. He did give out free ice creams at the end, though, so all was forgiven. Rish! it was in a room in the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Room that had plenty of room to spare, mainly because it had shut out many members of the media – myself included. Tugendhat shut down a four-storey atrium in Millbank and missed a golden opportunity to enter by climbing down from the ceiling. Did he mention he had been in the army? Truss was the only one who rented a room with fully functioning air conditioning. Unfortunately, he had forgotten where the door was. She struggled to find her way out and tried to escape through the first floor window. Her expression was sad. But not so sad. Tom Tugendhat… he was in the army, you know? Photo: Yui Mok/PA
Avoid all stunts
In 2016, during the leadership contest that gave us Theresa May as Prime Minister, Andrea Leadsom had organized an event where she was going to make a big speech about the economy. He never once mentioned the economy. Instead, at the end, he announced that he was going to march on Westminster. So a handful of MPs, Tim Loughton and Theresa Villiers among them, walked the 300 meters to parliament shouting: “Who do we want? Andrea Leadsom. When do we want it? Sometime in September!” accompanied by me and a few other hacks who couldn’t believe our luck. Once we got to parliament everyone was milling around looking a bit awkward before they realized they had no idea what they were doing there and dispersed. Within days, Leadsom had withdrawn from the race, to make May captain by default.
Learn to count
Under the Commission’s 1922 rules, all candidates had to receive 20 nominations from Tory MPs to be allowed into the first round of voting. Neither Shapps nor Javid could pull it off and had to gracefully withdraw from the competition. It was unclear if Chishti ever had more than one nomination – himself. “I would like to introduce the next leader of the Tory party. My.” Amazingly, Hunt made it through the first ballot, where he needed 30 votes to advance, only to get 18 – fewer than he had gotten the day before. It must have been something he said. Zahawi also came out in the first round. Stupid stunt… former leadership candidate Andrea Leadsom lends her support to former leadership candidate Penny Mordaunt. Photo: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images
Don’t throw your opponents
It is considered bad form to trash your leadership rivals. That’s why – if you’re lucky – you have a small army of prominent Tory MPs and other supporters who will do it for you. For a long time Truss was running third in the competition, with her biggest rival for second place, Mordant, on top of her. At this point Team Liz went for Mordant while Truss pretended he had nothing to do with her. David Frost even had the cheek to claim that Mordant was a bit lazy and never had the job. This from a man who didn’t realize that he had negotiated the Northern Ireland protocol and was now trying to unpick it because the EU had decided to implement it. Truss also received help from Kemi Badenoch’s team. Badenoch never expected to do the latter two and, with the help of Michael Gove, her leading man, was trying to raise her profile and secure a future Cabinet job. So Badenoch undermined Mordaunt because he was wide awake he wouldn’t have done her any harm.
Close the discussions
The final five candidates – Rish!, Truss, Mordaunt, Badenoch and Tugendhat – made it to the weekend of the first three televised debates. The first two were vague cases, with only Tugendhat brave enough to say that Johnson was completely dishonest. The rest played it safe, with the main action being blue-on-blue action between Reese! and Tras. The two pioneers quickly realized that they were hurting their chances and that the more the public saw of Badenoch, Mordaunt and Tugendhat, the more they liked them. So both refused to take part in the scheduled Sky debate. So it was cancelled. You can have too much democracy at times like this. Liz Truss and Kemi Badenoch take part in Britain’s Next Prime Minister: The ITV Debate on 17 July. Photo: Jonathan Hordle/ITV/PA
Fake the vote
Four of the six finalists dropped out of the race in roughly the order people expected: first Braverman, then Tugendhat, Badenoch and Mordaunt. But that hasn’t deterred rival camps from dropping hints that they could lend votes to rivals to make sure primary opponents are voted out. Gavin Williamson, who prides himself as a chief operator and helped run Ready4Rish!, would have you believe he was responsible for changing voters in this way, although given his general levels of effectiveness, he probably wasn’t. Even so, voting Rish! and Truss until the last two, Tory MPs did everything they could to ensure their party lost the next election. At least this is…
