The Conservative, Labour, and UKIP parties are all, in some form or other, having leadership elections. Although it’s difficult to know when Labour’s election for leader will begin.
Senior Conservative MPs are noted for for their ability to act with brutal rapidity in dispatching failed ministers or leaders. Never was this more in recent evidence than when our MP – Michael Gove – withdrew support for Boris Johnson’s campaign to be leader of the party.
The compression of the Conservatives’s leadership race into a matter of weeks is causing that brutality to become evident. Whereas, in past times, the election process would allow for candidates to develop their policy lines, not so now. The race to get down to the last two on the ballot, which goes forward to party members, involves rubbishing your opponents position, and character. The media have their favourites, and objective reporting suffers.
The same seems to be true of UKIP. Not that I know much about the goings on inside UKIP. It’s leader has just left, sacked or resigned, who knows, and a potential leader has just been readmitted to the party.
While all the negative briefings are deeply unpleasant, and have have the potential to cause bruises from the contest to be lasting, and career defining. I guess politics was ever thus. To grab for power means elbowing others out of the way. It’s life I suppose, though unattractive.
I read a super tweet, in which the writer suggests that in pub quizzes held in say 2030, the answer to almost every question will be 2016.