Register a campaign website name
You’ll need to act fast after declaring yourself a candidate in the leadership race. The first round of voting will take place less than a week after the Prime Minister resigns, and you don’t want to be caught on the hook. It is best to have a fully prepared domain name and website materials. Readyforrishi.com, reborn as ready4rishi.com, was registered in December last year. That might have been a bit early. It’s hard to argue – although that didn’t stop Rish! – you have been surprised by the events and have only recently decided to stand up when you have been waiting for the day for more than six months. Everyone knows you’re desperate for the top spot, but it’s bad form to appear too eager. Optics are everything.
Trigger the leadership race
Stating the obvious, but you can’t have a leadership contest until the previous prime minister resigns. This proved problematic with Boris Johnson, as he is so narcissistic and corrupt that he refused to step down long after most normal people would have known it was game over. With the leadership contenders realizing there was no chance Johnson would resign of his own accord, it became a cat-and-mouse game to see who would move against him first. The downside to kicking him out was that you risked looking disloyal; the upside was that you could set the agenda and appear to have a few moral principles. Not always an advantage in the Tory party. In the event Sajid Javid and Rish! did the dirty work by resigning within 10 minutes of each other on the evening of July 5. They tried to claim that their resignations were not consensual, but it seemed odd that they both had resignation letters prepared. Rish! claimed he was resigning over disagreements over economic policy, possibly over Johnson’s planned tax cuts. Which rather suggested that he was perfectly fine with Johnson being a serial liar about Partygate and ignoring repeated claims that the deputy chief whip was a sex pest. Yet, we all have our breaking point.
Rishi Sunak launched his campaign for the leadership of the Conservative Party a few months after first registering on the campaign website. Photo: Alberto Pezzali/AP
Make sure you’re in the country…or not
It was almost certainly no coincidence that Liz Truss, Rish!’s main rival, was absent from the G20 foreign minister’s meeting in Indonesia when he handed in his resignation letter, thus giving him at least a two-day head start on her. Truss came straight back from Indonesia without any of the other G19 ministers noticing that she wasn’t there. That’s Global Britain for you. Fortunately for Liz, Johnson still managed to hang on for a few days, despite more than 50 ministers resigning, so her own leadership campaign wasn’t too embarrassing. And she could legitimately claim to be the succession candidate and have nothing to do with the coup against Johnson.
Make a campaign video
For a laugh, if nothing else. No one could tell whether Penny Mordaunt’s was a joke or meant to be taken seriously. To a soundtrack of I Vow to Thee, My Country and a voiceover of Little Britain, the team at Mordaunt took us on a journey through the English countryside. This included murderer Oscar Pistorius and murdered Labor MP Jo Cox. Rish! chose to tell us a story and just put us to sleep. Truss took us on a whirlwind tour of her Instagram account as she posed with other politicians in front of ever-larger union flags. Grant Shapps was short and sweet. He had no other message than to the deputies: he would say anything to make them electable. Although, unfortunately, he failed to become electable. Tom Tugendhat simply promised to be Johnson’s opposite, which was the kiss of death for his campaign. Nadhim Zahawi said he would release his tax returns – but only those he had not yet filed. No one knew what was in Suella Braverman because no one could see it.
Penny Mordaunt’s leadership bid. Photo: Tolga Akmen/EPA
Don’t forget to book your place for the launch event
Grant Shapps and Rehman Chishti never got around to launching a campaign before their leadership bids evaporated – a loss for satire if nothing else. In 2019, even Matt Hancock and Mark Harper had some work to do. At Door Matt’s we were all given free phone chargers as a souvenir of the campaign; appropriately enough, they didn’t work. Harper had only nine people in the room, four of whom were sketch writers. It was unclear whether Zahawi and Braverman actually had a start, as they were only given five-minute speaking slots at the launch of right-wing Tory pressure group ConservativesWay Forward. Or Back, rather. A woman passed out during Zahawi’s slot. For the next few weeks, the chancellor pretended not to notice and just kept talking. Awks.
If you book a room, make sure it has air conditioning
Javid and Mordaunt booked a small airless private dining room in Westminster. Javid was drenched in sweat before he even began to speak. Not the strongest selling point for starting a campaign. He did give out free ice creams at the end though, so all was forgiven. Rish! was in a room in the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Room, which had plenty of empty seats, mainly because he had barred several members of the media – myself included. Tugendhat booked a four-story atrium at Milbank and missed a golden opportunity to get in by rappelling down from the ceiling. Did he mention he was in the army? Truss was the only one who rented a room with a fully functioning air conditioner. Unfortunately, she had forgotten where the door was. She struggled to find her way out and tried to get out through the first floor window. Her event was somber. But not so dark.
Tom Tugendhat… he was in the army, you know? Photo: Yui Mok/Pennsylvania
Avoid all stunts
Back in 2016, during the leadership contest that gave us Theresa May as Prime Minister, Andrea Leadsom organized an event where she was going to make a big speech about the economy. She never once mentioned the economy. Instead, at the end, she announced that she would be marching on Westminster. So a handful of MPs, Tim Lawton and Theresa Villiers among them, walked the 300 yards to Parliament shouting: “Who do we want? Andrea Leadsom. When do we want it? Sometime in September!” accompanied by me and a few other hacks who couldn’t believe our luck. Once we got to Parliament everyone was hanging around looking a bit confused before they realized they had no idea what they were doing there and went their separate ways. Within days, Leadsom withdrew from the race to make May the default leader.
Learn to count
Under the Committee’s 1922 rules, all candidates had to receive 20 nominations from Tory MPs to be admitted to the first round of voting. Neither Shapps nor Javid could even manage it and had to gracefully withdraw from the race. It was unclear whether Chischi ever had more than one nomination—himself. “I would like to introduce you to the next leader of the Tory Party. I. Strangely, Hunt made it to the first ballot, where 30 votes were needed to continue, only to receive 18 – fewer than he had the previous day. He must have said something. Zahawi also went in the first round.
Stupid stunt… former leadership candidate Andrea Leadsom throwing her support behind already former leadership candidate Penny Mordaunt. Photo: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images
Don’t smash your opponents
It is considered bad tone to confuse your leadership rivals. That’s why – if you’re lucky – you have a small army of prominent Tory MPs and other supporters who will do it for you. For a long time Truss was third in the race, with her biggest rival for the second qualifying spot, Mordaunt, above her. At this point, Team Liz went to Mordaunt while Truss pretended he had nothing to do with her. David Frost even had the audacity to claim that Mordaunt was a bit lazy and was never up to the job. This from a man who had not realized that he had agreed the Northern Ireland Protocol, which he was now trying to undo because the EU had decided to implement it. Trot also got help from Kemi Badenoch’s team. Badenoch had never expected to do the latter two and, with the help of Michael Gove, her point man, was trying to boost her reputation and secure future cabinet work. So Badenoch undermining Mordaunt for being too awake wouldn’t have done her any harm.
Close the debates
The final five candidates – Rish!, Truss, Mordaunt, Badenoch and Tugendhat – made it to the weekend of the first three televised debates. The first two were inconclusive affairs, with only Tugendhat bold enough to say that Johnson was completely dishonest. The others played it safe, with the main action being blue vs. blue between Rish! and Tras. The two favorites quickly realized that they were hurting their chances and that the more the public saw of Badenoch, Mordaunt and Tugendhat, the more they liked them. So both refused to take part in the planned debate on Sky. So it was cancelled. You can have too much democracy at times like these.
Liz Truss and Cammy Badenoch take part in Britain’s Next Prime Minister: The ITV Debate on 17 July. Photo: Jonathan Hordle/ITV/PA
Falsify the vote
Four of the final six candidates dropped out of the race in pretty much the order people expected: Braverman first, then Tugendhat, Badenoch and Mordaunt. But that hasn’t deterred rival camps from dropping hints that they might give votes to opponents to ensure key rivals are knocked out. Gavin Williamson, who prides himself on being an arch-manipulator and helped start Ready4Rish!, would have you believe he was responsible for swinging votes like this, although given his general levels of effectiveness he probably isn’t was. However, by voting for Rish! and Trot down to the last two, Tory MPs did everything they could to ensure their party lost the next election. At least this is…
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