Monday, September 09, 2024
Tory Leadership dirty tricks?
The paper says that suspicions surround former work and pensions secretary Mel Stride who, while seen as a decent chap, is not seen as a serious candidate to replace Rishi Sunak, somehow managed to get enough Tory MPs to put him on the original ballot and then got 16 votes, one more than Priti Patel in the first round – meaning the former home secretary was the one who was eliminated. This was achieved even though Mr Stride has not even had an official leadership campaign launch yet:
Essentially, Tory leadership vote fixing is the practice by one of the frontrunners of lending votes to a much less popular candidate who can then be moved up to take out a more serious rival.
This can happen because the Tory MPs get to decide who the final two are before members vote in an open contest.
There have been strong allegations of this happening before. Infamously, MPs supporting Boris Johnson supposedly switched to Jeremy Hunt to ensure he kept Michael Gove out of the final two in 2019. Mr Gove was seen as the bigger threat to Mr Johnson.
Politics is notoriously a dirty game so it wouldn't be a surprise if these rumours turned out to be true. What is surprising is that any news outlet thinks that the Tory Party is still relevant and that their leadership election is worth writing about.
