The contest for the leadership of Britain’s Conservative Party is shaping up as less a positive campaign for, say, Brexit or liberty or any high ideal. Rather it is looking like a defensive retreat, methinks. One would think the candidates were vying merely to become Her Majesty’s Leader of the Opposition, rather than her Prime Minister. They remind your diarist of Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan.

Is the writing so clearly on the wall? A Savanta ComRes poll this week is devastating for Conservative political prospects. Labor leads the Tories by 15 points, 43 to 28, though let it be noted that what is happening right now is not a general election and the Conservatives  remain in government.

Since Boris Johnson resigned from the party leadership last week, six candidates have emerged to replace him after the first round of MP balloting (in descending order): Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt, Liz Truss, Kemi Badenoch, Tom Tugendhat, and Suella Braverman — quite a diverse group in terms of background, one can note.

Five other contenders have dropped already from the field: Grant Shapps, Rehman Chrishti, Jeremy Hunt, Nadhim Zahawi, and Sajid Javid — this last, whose resignation from Cabinet started the avalanche of more than 50 Government resignations that ended Mr. Johnson’s premiership.

Noticeably lacking is the enthusiasm that Boris Johnson brought to leadership politics. Back in 2019 in the race to succeed Theresa May, BoJo was the clear favorite. Brexit hung in the balance, and his can-do spirit was deemed essential to getting UK independence through a recalcitrant Parliament. 

He then went to the voters and won a clear, undisputed mandate from the British people. In these two crucial areas, BoJo  succeeded. He even won seats held previously by Labor in the fabled “red-wall” in post-industrial northern England, to form a Government with an 80-seat majority.

Sadly, BoJo was unable to fulfill — or shrank from — the promise of Brexit. Instead, he forgot to “move forward into broad, sunlit uplands” of Churchill’s imagination. Rather, the Prime Minister retreated to politics as usual. Too much taxation, too much spending, and too much bureaucratic interference.

Britons witnessed the Conservative response to issues such as “climate change,” cultural values, and the coronavirus. Critics saw a difference only in degree, and not in kind, from what the Labor government would do. Lamenting this, your Diarist wore his pen — a seagull quill, one reader has speculated — to a nub.

Yet this litany bears recounting, for we may see much of it, again. The tragedy of the Conservative Government is not that ministers rebelled — too little, too late — against these misguided policies, but against the admittedly reckless political judgment of Mr. Johnson.

“Measures not men,” was how Pitt the Elder, the 18th-century Whig, framed the issue. Mr. Johnson’s Conservative colleagues in office did not disagree with Government policies, only the misdeeds of the man. Unfair enough, as my editor puts it. Their eventual defenestration of the PM demonstrates another axiom ruling the Ministry. “Power over principles.”

This is why Lord Frost caught the attention of Brexit purists. He resigned in December, over the issue of the Government’s response to Covid. As parting advice in his resignation letter, he recommended that BoJo return to the Brexit promise of low taxes, low spending, and a smaller state — the secret to the United Kingdom’s success since at least the Industrial Revolution.

Witness, for instance, the issue of taxation. All the candidates, save but Mr. Sunak, are promising tax cuts. As Truss-supporter Jacob Rees-Mogg tweeted, “It is time to stop socialist levels of taxation.” JRM claims that she demurred in Cabinet. Good for her. In the end, though, all tacitly supported the tax rise.

Now, let no one think I am arguing for ideological purity. Politics is the art of the possible. We can all do with a bit of water in our wine. BoJo’s policies, though, were so consistently against the spirit of Brexit as to be breathtaking. And none stood athwart the Prime Minister and demanded “Stop.” 

How do the remaining six candidates line up along the conservative spectrum? Mr. Sunak and Ms. Mordaunt may be considered center-right. He is criticized as a spend-and-tax globalist; while she is seen as too in-step with woke ideology to be a credible cultural defender.

Mr. Tugendhat, meanwhile, is positioned further to the left. When in April 2019 the New Statesman falsely accused Roger Scruton of anti-Semitism, Mr. Tugendhat was eager to denounce the conservative icon, only later issuing a grudging apology, feigning ignorance. How did he not know who Scruton was?

What about Tories on the right-side? Here, the spirit of Brexit is more robust, if split. Christopher Hope, a politics editor at the Daily Telegraph, tweets that the Eurosceptic Research Group is politicking for Mmes. Truss, Badenoch, and Braverman to line up behind one candidate to present a united rightist front against Mr. Sunak and Ms. Mordaunt.

Grim prospects, indeed. Conservative MPs will whittle down the six contenders to two. Then the ballot papers will go out to the rank-and-file membership to select the leader. A new prime minister will be announced September 5. Only the urgency to keep Sir Keir Starmer and Labor out of power gives this sad spectacle any “umph.” As for Wrong Way Corrigan, he ended up on the other side of the world from his destination.

BrexitDiarist@gmail.com