My quick briefing on the candidates for new PM of the UK (in no particular order).
Before I start, it's worth knowing some wider context. Firstly, the Tories are awful. Truly, staggeringly awful. For the last ~20-30 years, it's like they've been on a non-stop campaign to disprove me every time I think "Surely they can't get worse than this?". Johnson, I would like to think, was the nadir. He purged most of the reasonable and often competent people in the party a few years ago for not being sufficiently loyal to him and Brexit, then - like the insecure narcissist he is - surrounded himself with a cabinet appointed on the basis loyalty (to him), ideological fervour, and low competence. After all, weak leaders often like to make sure that everyone around them is worse so they look better and their job is more secure. Quite a few current British cabinet ministers are therefore clearly very mediocre. And that was even before a load of them resigned recently to be replaced by even lesser talents.
The Tory MPs select two candidates through a series of rounds, and these are then voted on by the party membership. However, the Tory Party members are both very few in number (their membership is about the same as the Liberal Democrats, despite the party polling about 5 times higher), and the members are also a right bunch of cranks highly disconnected from the lives of most Britons: tending heavily to be old, rich, and very right wing. Over time, this has also driven the parliamentary party to be more extreme, and to rely very heavily on huge donations from the very rich making them even more slaves to the elites. The Johnson years have been even worse, because they have essentially institutionalised rampant dishonesty and culture war waffle as a modus operandi, and a slavish obedience to the worst instincts of the right wing media. None - or probably none - of these fuckers have any real idea what it's like out there in the real country, nor care. But they do know as long as they bang the same old nationalist drums, they can keep captaining the sinking ship that is the United Kingdom, perhaps even when half the passengers are drowning.
Thatcher, still, is the ideological figurehead, except that these twats are stuck in the 1980s (to be fair, the party faithful are mostly 60+s who made their money then). 2022 problems need 2022 solutions, but all they're going to vocalise are 1982 solutions. I suspect a few (like Sunak and Tugendhat) are willing to put their heads above the parapet and try to explain this, but most are just going to scream about cutting taxes and regulations to magically drive economic growth, and trying to rage about Europe and lefty academics / artists / etc.
1) Rishi Sunak
Ex-Chancellor and billionaire quasi-aristocrat whose Indian-born wife wasn't paying tax because of some non-dom fiddle. Once seen as hot property, now significantly tarnished for not being sufficiently faithful to Brexit and promising to madly cut taxes ASAP. This of course actually makes Sunak appear to be the voice of reason in this cavalcade of horrors, and at least he's run a properly major government post not completely incompetently. Talks a lot about forging a new economic future, which is kind of a worry for a man who was already running the economy for the last couple of years. Will almost certainly be one of the last two, particularly from the not-so-right of the MPs. Might not be selected, especially as not popular with party members.
2) Tom Tugendhat
Who?
Mostly a backbencher, and also remarkable for being probably the most recognisably human in this stream of ordure that is the Tory leadership campaign. He appears to show genuine concern for people who are not rich, or even just genuine concern for anyone except himself at all, and some element of responsibility. He is still of course quite right wing. He does not stand a chance for a range of reasons, such as being not rabidly right wing enough, not having held a major office of state. Maybe, just maybe, the least worst candidate.
3) Elizabeth Truss
Dead-eyed lizard woman, currently Foreign Secretary. Incredibly obviously filled with dreams of personal ambition and very little else, no great record of competence or being able to relate to other human beings with anything approaching warmth, apparently makes very extravagant use of government expenses (waste, you see, is other people's problem). Co-author of a tract many years ago complaining that the problem with Britain was that we couldn't shove proles into sweatshops enough. Incredibly aggressively wants to cut tax, irrespective of whether the country can keep on running if taxes are cut. Ultra-Brexiter. Good chance of making the final two, although disappointing early show, currently in a somewhat distant third.
4) Kemi Badenoch
Who?
I think her only selling point is being black, female, and a Tory, which allows Tories to pretend they aren't so racist and sexist. Notable mostly for being extremely culture war-ish, which I am tempted to assume is her overreaction to insecurity that she's only got this far as the Tories' token black woman, just like a ragingly homophobic in-the-closet televangelist. However, attacking the liberal left plays extraordinarily well with the Daily Mail types, even if she barely has an actual policy position worth the name. She has no chance.
5) Penny Mordaunt
Surprisingly successful candidate, currently in second place behind Sunak. Definitely on the hard right of the party. Has held some positions of responsibility, but no major ones. Slightly vague on known policy positions. Possibly going to pip Truss for the Tory right's pick for several reasons: firstly, she can appear like a real human being with emotions and all that stuff. Secondly, she's probably relatively weak within the party, which will give MPs the idea they might be able to control her rather than vice versa. Thirdly, she's pleasingly vague on all sorts of important matters, which means people can imagine their own positions in her.
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6) Suella Braverman: Devastatingly incompetent and dishonest yes-woman who Boris Johnson made attorney general in order to claim that all Boris Johnson's illegal acts as legal. It is a sign of her sheer Dunning-Kruger incompetence that she even stood in the first place.
7) Nadim Zardhawi: Current Chancellor. Random face who probably would have never come close to power except for Boris firing almost everyone competent first. Suggested 20% cuts in every government department, clearly having not noticed that his own party did that 10 years ago and ended up making the departments dysfunctional. Although conspicuously secular, has Muslim background which might make him irredeemably toxic to the Conservative Party membership.
8) Jeremy Hunt: Arsehole of yesteryear, who - and representative of the Conservative Party's decline into greater insanity and incompetence - now looks like a very appealing choice. Undoubtedly a serious choice who could probably do the job, but also a one time Brexit refusenik, which dooms him in the current party. Exiled to the backbenches during the Johnson era both for lack of loyalty (to Johnson) and for probably knowing how to do the job of a minister properly. I would say of Hunt that he made a bit of a mess of the NHS, but at least he also admitted it and came up with a superficially responsible idea to do better, which means he might be able to learn stuff pragmatically rather than just holler ideologically.