The tedious and drawn-out contest to replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom comes to a merciful end on Friday when voting closes among the Tory party membership to determine which establishment figure, either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak, is to become the new leader next week.
The culmination of the near two-month-long process to pick the next leader of the Conservative party leader and therefore the next prime minister will come to a close on Friday when the final votes from the party membership will be tallied.
The winner of the contest, either Foreign Secretary Liz Truss or former Chancellor Rishi Sunak — both establishment veterans of the Johnson administration with links to the World Economic Forum, dashing any hope for meaningful change from the new government — will be announced on Monday. Boris Johnson is expected to hand in his resignation to the Queen the following day, Tuesday, at which point the monarch will appoint the new leader of Britain’s largest political party, which is still the Conservatives, as the new Prime Minister.
It will end a campaign in which bizarrely was played out in full public view, yet in which over 99 per cent of the public was barred from making their voices heard, with voting being limited to the approximately 180,000 paid-up members of the Conservative party. Indeed, the idea that the members’ vote actually significantly mattered in the contest was also undermined by the fact that the two candidates to be chosen from were picked internally by the party elite, a process which coincidentally eliminated all hopefuls who would have embarked on policies of change.
Political jockeying — likely including the trading of votes for future positions of power — among parliamentarians saw outsiders such as Kemi Badenoch cast aside, despite her overwhelming popularity with the base, in favour of two continuity Boris picks. Further adding to the farcical nature of the race, polling has suggested that the campaigns from both Sunak and Truss have been so lacklustre that — despite all of his faults and scandals — Johnson would demolish either candidate in a head-to-head.
In the weeks since Johnson announced that he would resign, Truss and Sunak have spent the majority of their time bickering over minute details of tax policy, as the rest of the country has been focused on the cost of living crisis that has come as a result of poor leadership and planning failures from the past decade of Tory rule, including Boris Johnson’s decision to lockdown the economy during the Chinese coronavirus crisis and to pursue a radical Great Reset-style green agenda, which left Britain vulnerable to price shocks in the international energy market.
Although both candidates have tried to distance themselves from these decisions, with Sunak belatedly coming out against lockdown measures and Truss saying that she would look to scrap parts of the green agenda in favour of more oil drilling and fracking, there is no escaping the fact that both candidates were members of Johnson’s cabinet and had the opportunity to resign in protest if they actually felt so strongly about the issues when they were being imposed.
During the drawn-out process, as opposed to the swift ‘smoke-filled rooms’ leadership selections of the past, the nation has been left essentially rudderless at a time of multiple national crises.
Mr Johnson, acting as ‘caretaker PM’ and his wife Carrie have spent most of the Summer vacationing in Greece or at the prime minister’s country residence at Chequers, with the notable exception of Johnson travelling to Ukraine — where he enjoys more popularity than at home — to promise more taxpayer money for the war effort against Russia and to tell the British public that they should accept higher energy prices for Ukraine’s “freedom”.
Despite Sunak garnering the most support from other MPs during the initial rounds of the selection process — and the Chinese Communist Party — polling has suggested that WEF-aligned Foreign Secretary Liz Truss will be the victor of the contest. Should the predictions come to fruition, this will mean that once again, the Conservative party will be headed up by a politician who voted against the Brexit referendum, not to mention that she is also a former Liberal Democrat.
It, therefore, remains to be seen whether the party will be able to maintain the gains secured by Johnson in the working-class areas that voted for him to ‘Get Brexit Done’.
Brexit leader Nigel Farage predicted on Friday that the Tories are “heading for a 1997-style wipeout” in the next general election, adding that “frankly, they deserve it”.
Pointing to failures on immigration, inflation, and energy, Mr Farage said that he hopes the Conservatives lose the next election so that there can be a “recalibration” of the party.
“I have absolutely no idea what the Conservative party is… I’m sorry it’s a strong word, I despise what they’ve done, what they’ve become, the weakness of their so-called leaders and their total lack of connection with the real world.”
On Monday when Boris Johnson ceases to be the leader of the Conservative Party and therefore no longer commands the confidence of the House of Commons, a series of constitutional steps will then be undertaken. The Prime Minister will have an audience with the Queen, where he will tender his resignation, and the monarch will then summon the replacement to formalise the new role.
Normally, the Queen would travel to her London residence, Buckingham Palace, for this process, meaning the process can be undertaken very quickly. Yet the Queen is now not in the first flush of health, and it has been revealed due to mobility issues she will not be moving from her Scottish retreat to sign off on these constitutional matters. In practice, this means the Prime Ministerial role will not be handed over the same day as the leadership results as might otherwise be expected, but in fact, will take place the next day.
Both Boris Johnson and whoever is to replace him, either Truss or Sunak, will travel to Scotland on Tuesday to meet with the Queen and perform the handover at her Balmoral home’s drawing room. This will be the first time in Queen Elizabeth II’s 70-year reign — and 15 Prime Ministers — that this audience won’t have taken place at Buckingham Palace.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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