The next Conservative leader and Prime Minister will be either a woman or someone of ethnic minority origins. All the while Labour are intent on having another North London, white, middle class, male leader.
Conservative MPs have chosen continuity in deciding that their members will vote for either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak. They could have chosen candidates with more distance from Boris Johnson, but instead they chose two who have been in the cabinet, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer respectively, for some time.
Other candidates like Kemi Badenoch, Tom Tugendhat and even Penny Mordaunt, were much less connected to the Boris regime, but Conservative MPs have finally rejected them all. So, what does this tell us?
Conservative MPs are being very cautious. They have chosen two candidates who will generally run the government in a similar way to what has gone before, for another two years. They are broadly from the same wing of the Conservative Party. They could have chosen a ‘change’ candidate, one who was shown to be a break with the current administration. They could have chosen someone very distant from Boris, who offered radical, eye-catching policies, who would call a General Election in early 2023.
Their best choice would have been Kemi, her youth, determination, radical thinking, and vision would have been a wake up call for the Conservatives and the country. She was probably the Conservatives best chance of winning outright the next General Election. Britain is ready to elect a black Prime Minister.
Whether Sunak or Truss become PM on the 5th September, when the Conservative Party members finish voting, Labour’s chances of winning the next General Election have now dramatically increased.
The public don’t want more of the same, they want someone who helps them move on and forget about the pandemic, partygate, Boris and the bluster. So, the Conservatives might well have won the diversity battle against Labour, in their choices for leader, but they are probably now one step closer to losing the war which is the next General Election.
