With only two right wheels, Tory clown car is heading for crash that will damage us all
In the summer – how long ago that seems now – I likened the Tory leadership race to a clown car careening off to the right. Back then the cast of Conservative caricatures was lengthy, and filled with faces both sinister and ridiculous.
Even at that point, some might have held out hope that wiser heads could prevail, and that a moderate and measured Conservative party might yet rise from the ashes of their defeat. Those bare hopes ended with the spectacle of tactical voting (I fear that using the word “tactical” may be overly generous here) seeing former frontrunner James Cleverly fall through the middle and out of the wacky races. The clown car is still sputtering on but it is running on two right wheels.
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Now, between Hard-Right Kemi Badenoch and I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Hard-Right Robert Jenrick, whichever way Conservative members vote, the clowns will be running the circus. That may make for fine entertainment but the collapse of good sense in the Tory party has serious consequences for the rest of us. Our country deserves a better class of opposition.
After all, while the Tories clown around there is no shortage of real work to be done. Someone has to hold government to account – Labour has now been in power for the better part of four months; they are preparing one of the more consequential Budgets of recent years; families and businesses up and down the country are worried about where their finances are going. Speaking as an incoming Select Committee chair, I have been ready and waiting for my committee to be in place, so that we can get stuck into our work – there really is no more time to lose.


Meanwhile, however, these potential “Leaders of the Opposition” are doing their level best not to be in post before the Budget next week, just in case they were asked to have an opinion about it.
Threat to expel dissenters
Jenrick’s great wheeze of the campaign has been to declare that not only will he campaign for the UK to abandon our longstanding commitments to human rights by leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, he will kick Conservative colleagues out of the party if they do not do the same. The first rule of politics is to learn how to count; someone may need to remind Jenrick that he does not have enough colleagues left to spare.
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Hide AdPerhaps we should credit him for at least taking a position on something. The latest bunfight between Jenrick and Badenoch this week was about whether or not it is even worth setting out their proposed policies right now. Apparently for Badenoch – overwhelmingly the favourite to win – that is all just a bit much.
Imagine that; a party that claims the right to govern this country – that was in fact governing this country just a few months ago – deciding that they do not need to offer us any idea of what they would do with power.
People are looking for practical and pragmatic representation – not opposition by pantomime and pratfall. Amongst the Tories, the custard pies are still being sharpened and the rubber mallets are being swung. Time to send these clowns packing.
Alistair Carmichael is the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland
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