Stephen Bush: Badenoch, Cleverly, Jenrick. For different reasons, I don’t think Atkins, Hunt, Patel or Braverman are gonna make it.

I can already feel that the Tory leadership race is gonna give me an ulcer, because of the number of people on the centre and left who have neither read a history book nor the news saying things like “hopefully the Tory party will move to the right”.

Who are the contenders at this point do u think

Badenoch, Cleverly, Jenrick. For different reasons, I don’t think Atkins, Hunt, Patel or Braverman are gonna make it.

Occasional reminder that a retiring senior civil servant of my acquaintance called Jenrick “the worst minister I have had directly to deal with in 45 years” prompting a scramble to work out who in the Heath government was worse.

But if he does get it there’ll be open season for The Curse of Jenrick jokes.

A man so crap that even Rishi Sunak, who loved to overpromote his mates almost as much as he loved micromanaging, went “no, that’s as far as you go”.

The only minister who was also a segment of the Key to Time.

My wife has already done this joke. For obvious reasons.

When as our then-Secretary of State I referred to him as “The Curse of Jenrick”, a senior colleague responded “More like the First Segment of the Key to Time, except we can’t transform him into something useful by poking him with a stick”.

Good to know we can still expect senior civil servants to be conversant with the classics.

Which other ministers of the last mob had he directly worked with? Would be interesting to know if he’s worse than Grayling, Truss, Braverman etc. ad nauseum

I don’t (think) I know the official Jim is referring to, but comfortably worse than all of those. Two of those I think it’s a category error to confuse “bad” with “crap”.

A good way of seeing the difference: Rishi Sunak was the crappiest prime minister of the five, Truss the baddest.

Grayling was crap in that at transport he had no vision and at MoJ he was dreadful at holding his own in spending round negotiations, which is a big part of why the criminal justice system is in crisis now.

He was bad in that on top of being forced into cuts and the privatisation of the probation system (consequences of being crap), he did pointlessly draconian things like banning books from prisons.

I hopefully am not sounding snooty but can you explain the difference here? I have to admit I’m struggling - by crap do you mean terrible at the job and bad is morally bad? Sorry if I’m not getting the point …

Do you feel more free to let rip about former conservative ministers post election?

As in, as cross country athletes, Sunak was the slowest runner but Truss was widely off course?

Oh, I like this a lot! Yeah, good way of putting it.

I disagree. Johnson was the worst & truss the crappest. Sunak was not quite as bad as either (on either metric), but was still rubbish.

Sunak was demonstrably crapper than either. Truss actually managed to implement cross-departmental policies in 49 days, something Sunak could not do in two years.

I mean Willie Whitelaw basically brought them down by facing off against the miners, so there’s an argument there (OTOH he’s just the kind of establishment buffer that civil servants liked in that era, tbf)

Oh wow badenoch V jenrick? And it's not my birthday or anything

According to the Sky alert I've just got, Hunt has ruled himself out already.

So in search for a new leader the hunt is on.

The dad jokes from the football commentary are catching!

I'm yet to see a single minute of this current tournament but based on past experiences, this may not be a compliment.

Ha! Was just the timing, with Alan Shearer's line after England go through on penalties 'pressure is for tyres' 😆😆😆

A tyred old cliché.

cannot say I blame him it will be a thankless task

And one he doesn't need. Sit it out and see where it lands

probably the Lords eventually...

Yes, at least he has a political track record to merit it. Unlike other recent appointments. I may not support his politics, but can't doubt his commitment.

which for Tory appointments is rare, thinking of Boris's sprog getting a peerage

Farage is already spreading rumours that he would eat Tugendhat alive (which is not true, Tom's calm under ~actual~ fire let alone words from semi-fash ponce) which tells me which direction he fears.

How many years would it take to rebuild the party into a serious contender if any one of these people lead it in the first X? Labour did it in one term, but they had a leader of a different calibre.

Post