So who do you think will be the next Conservative leader?

[Kicked in the Taco]

I still think it'll very probably be David Davis, but it'll be interesting (so far as a Tory leadership race can be such) to see how things pan out amongst the more socially liberal wing of the party in their efforts to find a rival contender.

I know this is exactly the kind of comment that tends to come back to bite you on the arse, but I really don't rate David Cameron's chances at all- he seemed to be almost immediately touted as the candidate of the party's "left", but if there's one thing you can say for that section of the party it's that they're generally pretty sensible and pragmatic- unlike the fruitcake right, they're likely to have learnt from the election of a total nobody whose main virtue was not having any real history for anyone to be pissed off by (Hague), and of someone who fit the ideological bill for his supporters but had no proven leadership abilities (Duncan Smith), both of which ended in disaster as we all witnessed. This is one reason (alongside blatant careerism) why people like Damian Green have come out in favour of Davis, and it does not make someone like Cameron- completely unproven and a total nobody to 80% of the population at a generous estimate- an attractive candidate. The fact that Cameron seems to have been trying to appeal to the right with his recent speeches could suggest he's nervous about the level of support he's getting from the party's left (I struggle to believe it's because he thinks he has their votes locked up).

The only way I see Davis facing a serious challenge is if Cameron, as recent rumour seems to be suggesting he may, comes to some sort agreement with Kenneth Clarke- who now seems to be the subject of all the talk again after being all but written off a few weeks ago. With his conveniently timed change of position on the euro- and indeed, the relative retreat of the EU as a major issue in British politics overall- the time may have finally come when just about enough Tories are so sick of opposition that they're prepared to accept that Clarke- despite the intense distaste with which many of us, myself very much included, might regard him- is their most electorally viable contender. But there is no way in hell Clarke would ever play the junior partner within such an accomodation.

Alternatively, they could just elect another Howard-esque caretaker to try and hold out until either the neo-cons annex us as the 51st state, or technology has advanced to the point where Thatcher's cryogenically preserved brain can be integrated with the systems of some kind of horrifying giant death-dealing robotic body.

What are your thoughts?

[Taxloss]

1. Horrifying giant death-dealing robot with Thatcher's brain. For sure.

They'd vote for it if they could - "the smack of firm government", or rather "the death-ray of firm government". The Mail would back it.

Seriously, though, I think it's an open race. Davis certainly looks like a favourite, but long periods in the lead are BAD NEWS in this kind of contest. And there's the possibility of a "dream team" of some sort, which I for one welcome with open arms as it's a recipe for a nightmare - look at the SDP.

The most important thing is that the election drags on for as long as posible and the Tories continue to look as though they don't know how to run their party, let alone run the country.

[Kicked in the Taco]

4. true- the most vulnerable position to be in is out front

Especially among the scheming ranks of the Tory party, and this whole thing could easily be turned on its head yet for sure. I'm really hoping that the anti-Davis Tories, instead of backing the strongest alternative potential leader, will just get behind a 'Stop Davis' candidate- we all saw what happened when they voted for the 'Stop Portillo' candidate and got lumped with Iain and Duncan Smith, plus it would probably make for a hilariously acrimonious and divisive contest.

[Taxloss]

5. Ha! Yes. Major was a "stop Heseltine" candidate.

Hague was "stop Clarke". And look where that got them.

I personally don't share the fear some on the left seem to have of Davis. He would not modernise, and that is why I cannot see him taking the Tories to electoral victory. His background, though it lends him a little media credibility, is nothing on his message - John Major had a humble background.

[Kicked in the Taco]

9. Yeah, I tend to agree on Davis

He's really just an old-fashioned scare-mongering Thatcherite, and his election would serve as another reminder that after 8 years the Tories still think they've been right all along and that the British people are idiots for not realising it.

[ikri]

2. The Tories

Do have two or three candidates who could perhaps challenge Labour again: Port-a-loo (if he were to return to the party folds), Widdicombe and Clarke. They have enough charisma and name recognition to be Tory leaders.

However, Port-a-loo may or may not be gay (not that anyone really cares, but it'd be better if he just said one way or another) and that will disturb the blue rinse brigade.

Ann Widdicombe has never been married and has no children. It'd be hard to make people relate to her if she were to speak on family policies.

The most likely of the three to become Tory leader is Ken Clarke. Except he's a Europhile in a party of rabid Euroskeptics and he's more centrist than most Tory MPs. Whilst these are qualities that would probably lead more people to vote for him, in the Tory party they're deadly sins apparently. The adoption of Euro-friendly policies in the near future would reek of hypocrisy after the years of bile they've spewed about Europe. And admitting that a centrist leader is more attractive to the UK population would show the Tories just how far to the right they have fallen.

They'll end up with Davis, not because he's the most likely candidate to get them elected, but because selecting someone who might get elected as PM would show them how wrong they have been about UK politics for the last 15 years.

[Kicked in the Taco]

10. I think your last comment sums it up nicely

Stupidity and denial can be a heady mix...

[moggie]

3. You make it sound dangerously exciting

I've tried to care about the race, but whenever I try to read about it I... zzzzzzzz.

Whuh? Sorry, I dropped off for a moment there. So I like the sound of MechaThatch. True, she's an evil old witch, and it would mean I wouldn't get to fulfil my longtime ambition of dancing on her grave, but it would certainly inject some much-needed excitement into parliamentary politics. And since the average age of the rank-and-file Tory members is around 115, any excitement will probably finish off a lot of them.

[Taxloss]

6. It does matter, a good deal.

We disregard the Tories at our peril. They'll build MechaThatch one day. Laour is in uncharted territory - the longer it remains in power, the greater the chances that some young people might regard the Conservatives as - choke - the anti-establishment choice.

[moggie]

7. You're quite right

It's a depressing thought. I'd like to see the Tories destroyed before they have a strong undead leader, but the prospects for a revitalised Labour don't look great at present, and I find it hard to take the Liberals seriously as an alternative.

[Kicked in the Taco]

8. lol...MechaThatch

Now it has a name it's starting to seem dangerously real...

[ikri]

11. I do get the feeling

That Thatcher will be the first Prime Minister who will require a team of guards for their grave to prevent people from dancing/urinating on it.

Perhaps it would be easier to launch her into space (return her to her home world :)) or bury her in another country.

[LeftishBrit]

13. Also there will be right-wing nutters wanting to dig her up!

Or she may just jump out of the grave herself, and make herself PM again. Maybe she always was "MechaThatch" - she never seemed very human. She seemed to fear nothing in the world so much as "Wetness" - perhaps because that could cause some of the iron to rust?

[D-Notice]

12. I'd prefer Clarke

Despite the facts he sells fags to 3rd world kiddies...

We need the Tories to get their act together & become some sort of opposition party (unfortunately the Lib Dems aren't considered a credible alternative).

If Clarke became leader, there's a chance (no matter how small & unlikely) that the Tories would become a lot more libertarian which would (hopefully) force Labour to ditch their authoritarian ways...

I know I'm hoping for a lot on very little... but it's the only way we'll get back to having some sort of control over the future of Labour

[LeftishBrit]

14. I'd certainly prefer him to any of the likely Tory alternatives.

Not that I want someone who served as Health Secretary under the Evil Regime to be PM. Nonetheless, he's probably the least bad of the serious candidates. Davis is so right-wing that even Blair has no worries about staying to his left. With Clarke, Blair might find it difficult to go further right without being accused of being actually to the right of the Tories.

[Mr Creosote]

15. I think it will be a dream ticket

of Tommy Cannon as leader and Bobby Ball as deputy. Jim Davidson will be shadow foreign secretary and Floella Benjamin will shadow the Home Office. Derek Laud will get Northern Ireland.

[moggie]

16. How about Bernard Manning?

Bernard Manning for the Home Office and Floella as Chancellor, I say.

[Mr Creosote]

22. He's dead isn't he?

but then so is the tory party so there's a certain synchronicity there.

[non sociopath skin]

28. No more than he's ever been.

The Skin

[Anarcho-Socialist]

17. My dream Tory leader

As creepy as Michael Howard
As cold and remote as IDS
As a boastful exaggerator as William Hague
As loony as Norman Tebbit
As insulting to everyone as Boris Johnson.

The Lib Dems might become the official opposition.

[...of J.Temperance]

18. Ann Widdecombe for Tory leader, just for the simple reason of...

...the comedy factor, she looks like a character out of Michael Bentine's Potty Time.

However I think it'll be David Davis and thankfully he'll get them nowhere. I can't see the general public taking to him at all. He looks like a thug for a start, with that broken nose.

[Kipling]

26. You REALLY want Thatcher back?

Suit yourself.

[Kicked in the Taco]

19. Conservative leadership watch

Worried about missing the latest twists and turns in the Conservative leadership race while on holiday? Fear not.:crazy:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4652549.stm

Apparently Davis' grandfather was a leader of the Jarrow crusade. I'm sure he'd be so proud...

[tjwmason]

20. It depends on how the rules change.

If they pass the election back to the M.Ps it will turn into a Clarke-Davis fight - if the final decision is made by the national membership Clarke probably won't even stand.

The M.Ps do tend to have brains and some acumen - remember that they actually voted for Clarke last time round, only to have him rejected by the activists over Europe. Clarke realises that the Tory Party nationally despises the E.U. with a vengeance even the Mail finds difficult to muster at times - he also realises that he likes it (his comments about the Euro and the Constitution were simply common-sense - neither's coming our way anytime soon), and so they will never choose him.

A Clarke-Davis scrap would be quick (as it's easier to poll a couple of hundred people who all work in the same building than however many thousand folk all over the country) but more of a fight. If it goes to the activists then we'll get a Rifkind-Davis or Cameron-Davis fight which would be less fun to watch (less vehement) and probably a walk-over for Davis - this will be stretched out over interminable weeks of boredom and analysis on Newsnight.

My opinion is that the best thing (from the Tories' perspective) would be to dump the national election, and have the M.Ps elect Clarke.

[Kicked in the Taco]

21. They're discussing this at the moment--

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4184680.stm

I must admit I posted this under the assumption they will go back to selection by MPs (I think it's a pretty safe one, though- from the sound of it, this "constitutional college" seems to have rubber stamp written all over it). If they don't I agree Clarke probably wont even bother standing, and strongly agree that we will suffer interminable weeks of boredom...

[T_i_B]

23. My own preference would me for Sir Malcolm Rifkind

as he would move the party back towards the centre and make it a lot more appealing. I'd rather have a strong opposition then a load of no-hopers with their heads up their own ideological backsides. We can all see the effects of a weak opposition from the last parliament.

However, I strongly suspect that it will be David Davis. He's a right winger in a party full of right wingers. Rifkind may well be seen as being a little bit too "wet" for the Tories.

[Kicked in the Taco]

24. Rifkind does come across as a decent guy

I'm somewhat torn in that, like (I suspect) a lot of people, I want an effective opposition but I don't actually want to risk a Tory government- so basically I want to have my cake and eat it. Having said that, perhaps with someone like Rifkind moving the Tories to the centre, new labour would actually be forced to move leftward to claim some distinct ideological ground- although I think Brown would have to take over for that to happen, its all got a little too messianic for Blair. If it didn't, the prospect of a Rifkind-led government would be a far less threatening weapon to try and scare wavering Labour voters into the polling stations with than that of a Howard government (which worked on me, for one).

[emad]

25. Rifkind is the asshole who stopped any investigation into the

death of Robert Maxwell.

He and other Tory grandees have zero chance of winning an egg and sppon race let alone a leadership election.

[T_i_B]

27. Let's have a Not the Tony Blair party!

Interesting article from the Grauniad. Make of this what you will.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1558806,00.html

With varying degrees of sincerity or cynicism, the Conservative leadership candidates have been making their pitches, setting out their stalls, and covering their tracks. In the process they have illuminated the party's continuing malaise. The Tories' deepest problem is Tony Blair: and the answer staring them in the face is the one many of them seem unable to grasp. Far from aping the government, they need to become as unlike it as possible. On every question, from individual freedom to foreign policy, the Tories must became Not the Tony Blair party.

If anyone personifies the problem it is David Cameron. In his speech last week he displayed his gift for eloquent statements of the obvious ("liberal values are best defended from a dangerous assault ... define our shared values ... freedom under the rule of law"), combined with the usual demands for increased state power, including a regulatory authority for mosques. But nothing in Cameron's speech was more significant than his recent comment that "I am proud to have a prime minister who knows what he is doing". It was an echo of Michael Howard's congratulations for Blair on his "statesmanlike" response after the July 7 attacks.

It might be understandable if the Tories are awestruck, or at least punch-drunk, after suffering three devastating election defeats. And yet some Tories' admiration for Blair goes further. If Cameron is bad, the Tory press is worse. Which grovelling New Labour groupie described Blair in these words last year? "Prescient, brave, eloquent and in charge ... a prime minister not just a party leader." That was Charles Moore, former editor of the Daily Telegraph, whose devotion is shared by Michael Gove of the Times, now a Conservative MP campaigning for Cameron: "I can't fight my feelings any more: I love Tony ... as a rightwing polemicist, all I can say looking at Mr Blair now is, what's not to like?"

Many ordinary Tories in the country could answer that question. Far from loving Tony, they loathe him - and here is the great gulf between them and the party leadership. Normal, unideological Tories loathe Blair for banning fox-hunting and for having taken the country into a needless and illegal war on false pretexts, and they loathe the government's relentless assault on individual freedom and due process.

[LeftishBrit]

29. If the Tories love Tony so much...

Why don't they choose *him* as their leader?

Then maybe the Labour Pary could choose someone who isn't a Tory.