Every party leadership election is a choice between ideology or power. Political history on both sides of the aisle is littered with the career wreckages of winning ideological candidates — from Iain Duncan Smith and Liz Truss on the Right, to Michael Foot and Jeremy Corbyn on the Left. The lesson is clear: in order to implement any ideology at all, power — and the compromises necessary to achieve it — must come first.

It means that, even if a candidate cares deeply about their pet issues, they need to be prepared to put some aside when prioritising what they choose to talk about. Nothing short of a laser-like, monomaniacal focus on what is necessary to discuss and do is needed to make political headway. Without this, any nuance and thought put into a wider political philosophy is lost.

Neither Jenrick nor Badenoch have been prepared to do this during the leadership election so far, with the latter focusing on outdated culture war issues, and the former loudly burnishing his credentials on immigration. That’s not to say these issues don’t matter — of course they do — but the wider electorate is far more likely to reward attention devoted to bread-and-butter political issues such as housing, childcare affordability, and NHS waiting lists.

Perhaps the membership’s winning candidate, having won the contest with robust language on red-meat topics, might pivot towards the concerns of the wider British electorate rather than the Tory selectorate. But this pivot will not be one backed by a mandate from the party membership. And given the weak mandate offered by the final MPs’ round, whoever ends up on top with the members is in for a rough ride — no matter their margin of victory.

The party leader may nominally be the leader of Conservative members, but what really matters is their relationship with fellow Parliamentarians. It doesn’t matter how enthusiastically the party membership backs a new leader: if the winner of the vote doesn’t have the confidence of the MPs they lead, their authority is on notice from day one.

This is precisely the curse that the MPs have already cast upon their next leader. Cleverly was knocked out by being only four votes behind out of 120 cast; only one vote separated Badenoch and Jenrick. What does this tell us? Leave aside the Tory membership, and even the party’s MPs don’t have a clue about the Conservatives’ ideological future. The votes were evenly split because they didn’t know what they wanted. There is much soul-searching still to be done.

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James Sean Dickson is an analyst and journalist who Substacks at Himbonomics.

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