And then there were two. Either Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick will be the next Conservative leader. This is a contest that, for the first time since members were given the final say, will really go down to the wire. Whoever wins, the Tory party looks set to change radically.
Badenoch’s list is peppered with centrists of the highfalutin and careerist kinds
When Iain Duncan Smith made the final two back in 2001, it was clear that he would beat Ken Clarke. The outcome of the tussle between Davids Cameron and Davis in 2005 was pretty much a foregone conclusion after Eton Dave’s Chinese takeaway of a speech – very yummy, what was in it again? – at party conference.
Of the more recent contests, by late summer 2022, we all knew that Liz Truss had beaten Rishi Sunak very comfortably, well before the result was declared. In 2019, meanwhile, it was obvious that Boris Johnson, the grassroots’ darling, was going to crush Jeremy Hunt.
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