The Fox has been shot, the Crabb’s stuffed... Phew!
TOP Tory backbencher Graham Brady – the Prince Andrew lookalike from Altrincham & Sale West – entered committee room six at 6.27pm. He cleared his throat, announced the vote result and concluded: ‘Dr Liam Fox has been eliminated.’
Crumbs. I know the Conservative Party is ruthless but they had eliminated him! ‘Eliminated…’ said Brady, ‘from the ballot.’ Phew. Even so, the Fox had been shot.
There were about 100 of us, MPs and scurvy reporters, in the high-ceilinged, river-view Palace of Westminster room. Its walls were lined with mint-coloured, Pugin-designed silk wallpaper and a vast Hickel oil painting of William Pitt addressing the Commons after France declared war on us in 1793. Little changes.
Dr Fox had managed just 16 votes and Stephen Crabb a mere 34. Gove on 48 had done better than expected – but had Theresa May (165 votes) and her supporters lent support to Gove to increase the pressure on Andrea Leadsom (66), whom the May camp may regard as the greater threat?
Theories, theories. Tory leadership elections are rife with theories. ‘Most of Fox’s people will come to us, I hope,’ said a Leadsomite. ‘Crabb’s stuffed,’ said another man. A dressed Crabb, surely. ‘If the activists see and hear Andrea, she can beat Theresa, though the time-scale is tight,’ ran another theory. A Fox supporter – Scarborough’s Robert Goodwill – stood glumly by the door, looking as though someone had just stepped on his ping-pong ball. A couple of MPs from other camps shuffled beside him, trying to look sympathetic. Poor little Goodwill. Someone will scoop him up but he will be wary of backing another loser.
All day the committee corridor had shimmered with intrigue and sideways glances. The corridor is about 300 yards long and the electorate (all Tory MPs) could be seen approaching the polling station from afar.
This gave tellers from the various candidacies time to assemble appropriate expressions to their faces. An MP who had promised to vote their way? A wink or a comradely, affirming nod. The art of parliamentary politics is to make them feel embraced but not quite owned. Or was it an MP who had been feeble and indecisive? Time for a last pleading stare, a flirtatious smile.
All MPs bar one (David Cameron, it seemed) cast a vote. There were no spoilt ballots. Boris Johnson, no longer in the running, voted mid-afternoon and said ‘democracy has been served’. Boris missed Michael Gove’s arrival – perhaps just as well. How did you vote? ‘I voted for a Scotsman,’ replied the Aberdonian. Maybe he voted for Fox, then. Later, Boris’s former campaign manager Ben Wallace (Wyre & Preston N) strode towards us, still powered by steam after the Gove treachery. Wallace is the one who said he would cut off Gove’s goolies. I asked if he had brought his blade. ‘Never take a knife to a gunfight,’ growled the ex-Army officer.
Simon Hoare (N Dorset) had been first to vote in the morning. He had been queuing like a biddy at the sales. One of the last MPs to enter committee room seven, where the voting happened, was demure Nicola Blackwood, the amateur soprano from Oxford W & Abingdon. She slipped in with ten minutes to go. Voting closed at six o’clock and then Mr Brady and fellow members of the 1922 Committee, which organises the Tory backbench MPs, got down to counting and verifying the 329 votes. After 20 minutes the campaign managers were called in to be given the verdict. The corridor swelled with rubberneckers, journos and, for all I know, a few of those undertakers you get in cowboy films when there is about to be a shoot-out. Havant’s Alan Mak, Westminster’s worst greaser, sidled by, a mollusc in search of a rock. Michael Gove hove into view but melted away. And in room seven, Iain Duncan Smith did impressions of Ken Clarke making a fool of himself on Sky News.
We’ll probably do the whole thing again on Thursday.