After all this vitriol, who’ll put Humpty Dumpty Tory party back together again?
AFTER two rounds of the Tory leadership contest it is already clear that whoever eventually wins faces a huge challenge in putting Humpty Dumpty together again.
The Tory party is badly split and the divisions are becoming more acrimonious by the day.
Yesterday’s result did not really shift the dial in terms of the overall contest, but the debate became even more fractious.
Rishi Sunak remains on course to make the final two but cannot yet be certain of it. Insurgent candidate Penny Mordaunt continued to make ground but could not shake off Liz Truss’s terrier-like campaign.
And things are being said by senior Tories about their colleagues that cannot be unsaid. Tom Tugendhat, whose centrist campaign appeared to be faltering yesterday, has described it as a ‘knife fight in a phone box’. Even those who survive will emerge bloodied.
Insults were flying freely. Lord Frost, who was poised to back Miss Truss last night, began the day by putting the boot into Miss Mordaunt, who served as his junior minister.
She was, he said, not tough enough to be PM and prone to going awol. In the end he had to ask Boris Johnson to move her on.
Mr Sunak’s team have suggested that those like Miss Truss, who are proposing big tax cuts, are economically illiterate.
Jacob Rees-Mogg has said he would not serve Mr Sunak because of his ‘disloyalty’. Off the record, allies of Mr Johnson have dubbed the former chancellor a ‘treacherous b*****d’.
Suella Braverman said Miss Mordaunt was too woke to ever win her support, and took a swipe at Miss Truss by saying the fact she voted Remain six years ago still cast a shadow over her suitability for the top job.
She later made up for this when sources said she would give her backing to the Foreign Seretary.
For their part, Miss Truss’s allies earlier branded Mrs Braverman and her supporters as ‘idiots’ after the Attorney General refused to drop out of the contest yesterday morning, despite clearly being destined for the chop.
The scrutiny of Miss Mordaunt is understandable – even necessary – given her meteoric rise from unknown minister to a favourite to be Britain’s next PM.
But the wider infighting is in danger of becoming endemic. In his final days in office Mr Johnson warned disgruntled ministers that the Conservative Party was becoming ‘ungovernable’.
Even with his massive electoral mandate and giant personality he could not ultimately hold things together. There is now a real danger that the party will fall apart under a new leader.
And Labour will be there to help every step of the way. A senior member of Keir Starmer’s team gleefully revealed yesterday that the party has already begun a dossier recording every blue-on-blue attack.
Every insult hurled now will be thrown back at the new leader in September. And every wound will be self-inflicted.