The next Tory leader must either open his Red Box or win over the Red Wall
Six years ago on the eve of the Brexit Referendum vote, I was given the job of following Boris Johnson around the Yorkshire town of Selby.
He landed at a former WWII airfield joking that the helicopter pilot should have put on “Ride of the Valkyries” – (think Apocalypse Now) – as he came into land.
Striding towards the town centre on a whirlwind day of campaigning, he was mobbed. People of all ages rushed out to meet him, take a photo or simply be seen near him. “Where are these Remain voters the polls keep telling us about?” he boomed.
Just a week later, Dominic Raab would call it the “Heineken Effect”. The Vote Leave champion could reach parts of the country other Tories couldn’t get anywhere near, he wrote, explaining why Boris should be PM after David Cameron quit.
Unfortunately, the piece was published just hours after Raab had, overnight, switched sides to back Michael Gove. Bitter Tory infighting is far from new. Despite Boris Johnson’s many and obvious flaws, the point about his reach still stands. And it’s one that the Conservative Party needs to think about as it embarks – yet again – on a search for a new leader.
In this social media age our society has created, who is going to be able to galvanise voters in every corner of the country in a way that Boris Johnson once could? And if not, who will come anywhere close?
In the absence of a “populist”, Tory MPs and grassroots members alike need to work out if they opt for a “Better Manager” – someone who actually reads documents in their ministerial Red Box and remembers if they’ve thrown a party – or instead go for someone who comes closest to Boris in appealing to both the Red Wall and the Home Counties.
The problem is having to do so in the teeth of the worst economic crisis since the 1970s, as well as having to deal with the aftershocks of the very Brexit vote Boris was in Selby to promote in 2016.
In his valedictory resignation speech, the PM once more boasted he had got “Brexit done”, but it’s hardly begun. Indeed, the government is now trying to delete the Northern Ireland Protocol it signed up to and Leave voters would be hard pressed to think of any tangible benefits. Crown Stamps on pint glasses ain’t gonna cut it.
More confusing for Tory leadership contenders are the polls, which have begun to suggest Leave voters are becoming frustrated with the Conservative Party they backed to lead Britain to its “independent future”.
A recent YouGov poll suggested that just 49 per cent of Leave voters would have backed Johnson as PM.
While they’re unlikely to switch to Labour en masse, they could sit in their hands in a General Election – allowing Labour a much better chance of recreating the type of result we saw at the Wakefield by-election.
Fortunately for the Tories, Labour is having kittens about its own leader – who could still, remember, be forced to resign in a matter of days if Durham Constabulary fines him for his now infamous beer and curry night.
Sir Keir Starmer really should have Labour 20 points ahead of a Tory party drowning in historic levels of sleaze and incompetence. But no one really knows what he stands for.
On top of that, “Kingmaker” Peter Mandelson has notably shifted in recent weeks – panning Sir Keir’s lack of ideas and deciding, by all accounts, that Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting is a better choice as the next big thing.
Then you have the ever-present Andy Burnham. The Greater Manchester Mayor chose this of all weeks to opine about future Labour policy in the Guardian. Stella Creasy has been at it too – courting the pro-EU vote.
Labour has had its very own celebrity leader in the past – Tony Blair. Looking back at the 1997 Election his broad appeal saw ‘New Labour’ take Tory citadels across the nation, from Romford and Finchley to Swindon and, er, Tamworth.
Would Sir Keir be able to do this? Would he have the townspeople of Selby rushing out to greet him? One Labour source yesterday joked: “They’d probably run the other way.”
It’s all to play for.