“This is the darkest day in the history of the Tory party: they’ve all gone absolutely mad,” a senior Conservative said when Margaret Thatcher deposed Edward Heath. He was expressing the widely held view that the party had just made itself unelectable by lurching to the right. Thatcher went on to win three successive general elections.
Almost 50 years later, we hear the same – that Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick are too extreme to lead the Tories to victory. And that by excluding both left of Conservative-centre candidates James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat from the final ballot, Tory MPs have guaranteed Labour’s re-election in 2029.
