12:15am Friday: Sunak wins round 2 with 101 votes (28% of total), Mordaunt second with 83 (23%), Truss 64 (18%), Badenoch 49 (14%), Tugendhat 32 (9%) and Braverman 27 (8%). Braverman is eliminated. A YouGov poll of Conservative members has Mordaunt thumping both Sunak and Truss head to head, with Truss thumping Sunak. On this round, Braverman and Tugendhat lost votes from round 1 even though candidates dropped out. The next round is Monday.
8:15pm Guardian live blog says today’s vote will be announced at 3pm UK time (midnight AEST). So two hours earlier than yesterday.
6:17am Thursday: Round 1 result: Sunak 88 votes, 25% of total, Mordaunt 67, 19%, Truss 50, 14%, Badenoch 40, 11%, Tugendhat 37, 10%, Braverman 32, 9%, Zahawi 25, 7% and Hunt 18, 5%. Hunt and Zahawi are eliminated for failing to get the 30 votes required to advance.
One of the six remaining candidates will be eliminated each round until there are two left, who will go to the membership. While Sunak won this round, he is not safe as his support is well below the 33.3% required to assure advancement to the membership vote. I think the question is whether Truss can overtake Mordaunt once other right-wingers are eliminated. There will be a second round today.
Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.
To elect a new leader, Conservative MPs vote in rounds with the lowest polling candidate eliminated each round, until there are just two left. Those final two go to the Conservative membership, which votes by mail. Candidates required at least 20 MP supporters to nominate. Eight candidates have cleared this threshold.
Results for today’s first round are expected at 2am AEST. The lowest polling candidate and any others who fail to reach 30 votes are eliminated. There are 358 Conservative MPs in the House of Commons. A second round of voting is likely Thursday, then a third round next Monday. The final two will be known by July 21, and the winner of the membership vote will be announced on September 5.
To be certain to make the final round, a candidate needs one-third of the MPs’ vote. The membership is more right-wing than MPs, so if a right-wing candidate makes the final two, that candidate could win.
At the moment, this appears to be a contest between former Chancellor Rishi Sunak and everyone else. Sunak is sticking to fiscal rectitude in not offering a tax cut until inflation of 9.1% is under control, while other candidates want a tax cut NOW! Sunak is likely to make one of the final two spots, and I don’t know who will win the other spot.
There was good news for Labour leader Keir Starmer, as he and his deputy, Angela Rayner, were recently cleared by Durham police over allegations they breached lockdown rules while campaigning last year. Starmer had pledged to resign if fined.
Boris Johnson resigned as Conservative leader on July 7, but remains caretaker PM until a new leader is elected. If he was holding back the Conservative vote, I would have expected a polling rebound for the Conservatives once he was ousted, but the opposite has happened, with Labour getting double digit leads in most polls taken since Johnson’s ousting. Perhaps Johnson was holding up the Conservatives with non-university educated whites outside the big cities.
US Supreme Court decisions
I wrote for The Conversation on July 5 about the recent history of appointments to the US Supreme Court that has created the current 6-3 right split. While the Supreme Court is historically unpopular, so is President Joe Biden, and so the Democrats are still likely to be thumped at the early November US midterm elections.
Furthermore, having two senators per state makes the US Senate heavily malapportioned, with a large bias towards rural and small town voters, which have been trending towards Republicans at recent elections. This bias could give Republicans a lock on the Senate.
Japanese upper house elections
Elections for half of the Japanese upper house were held on Sunday. The ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) won 63 of the 125 seats up for election (up six) and its Komeito allies 13 (down one). The LDP holds 119 of the 248 total seats and Komeito 27 for a comfortable overall majority. Japan has separate upper and lower house elections. These elections were marred by the assassination of former LDP PM Shinzo Abe on Friday.
Dr Doolittle
Sturgeon’s independence referendum fantasy is going nowhere unless and until there is a change of government, so 2024 at least. Of course, she may go through with her 2023 stunt, but it will likely be boycotted by unionists and deprived of any legitimacy. Of course, the plan is to keep doing this until nationalists get the result they want, as is the plan for Northern Ireland. In reality, there is still a significant likelihood that a legitimate independence referendum would be unsuccessful, with most polls either showing a very slight yes lead, or a no lead. Should a future UK government agree to either another Scottish referendum, or a border poll for Northern Ireland, I think a time frame needs to be made very clear on when a request for another referendum might be considered in the event of a status quo result, and that such a time frame should be significant, to put an end to nationalists demanding ongoing referendums until they get the answer they are after.
Matt31 at 12.37 pm
Yes, I know the polls. The only time the Yes vote has had a clear lead was in the last months of 2020.
Yet for the Unionists in Westminster to deny another referendum would be “courageous”, as they say in Whitehall. Usually what has happened elsewhere is such an attitude makes the Indies work harder.
The Independence campaign in 2014 was half-baked, particularly on economic policy. Varoufakis, who has taught at Glasgow Uni, told them they should not hoist themselves to Sterling but his view, which is based on very sound economic knowledge, was ignored. Because Scottish bank notes are different, it is much easier for Scotland to create its currency than for Greece, stuck in the Eurozone.
Some discussion of the legalities of holding another referendum (with polling chart since 2014) is at:
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/scottish-independence
There was a significant gender gap in the 2014 vote, with around 57% of women voting No. Those under 25 were also around 54% No. If there was change in those groups, No might not hold on. See:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-34283948
The SNP leader until 2014, Alex Salmond, was not as effective a leader as Sturgeon. There is little sign of the Tory contenders, even Mordaunt, being nearly as effective as Sturgeon, so Yes could win. The situation in Scotland is much closer than in Quebec, where two thirds oppose independence. See:
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/17/quebec-francois-legault-referendum-00040228
Matt31 at 8.32 am Fri
Not sure you could rely on Truss following anything through. Financial Times says she’s struggling:
https://www.ft.com/content/cc08349b-3073-4fdf-a517-bd93abfa7d09
Includes this: ‘The next few days will be crucial for Truss — who described herself as “the leader of the free world in opposing Putin” — as she battles to get on to the final shortlist of two candidates after further voting by Tory MPs. Party members will then choose the winner.’
Fortunately others are trying to oppose Putin. Truss has veered right nearly as much as Mark Latham.
Buyers remorse:
What UK Thinks: EU
@whatukthinks
Latest
@YouGov
@thetimes poll.
In hindsight #Brexit was right 35 (-3); was wrong 53 (+2).
Fwork 13-14.7 (ch since 6-7.7).
Record low % right & record high % wrong. https://bit.ly/3cmk7Yg
Rakali at 4.58 am
Did the sample allow a view of the sentiment in Scotland and NI or are they treated just like the minnow states in Australia?
Rakali at 4.58 am
Samples are too small: only 208 in London and 149 in Scotland. Similar remorse on Brexit in both places, with only 65% thinking it was wrong to leave. Hard to believe the real figure in Scotland is not higher.
Adrian Fri at 11.38 am
Truss camp looks all at sea, according to an article in Bloomberg (who cannot afford proof-readers):
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-15/truss-sends-up-a-bat-signal-to-the-tory-right-in-the-race-for-no-10 (article dated 16 July)
One para: “The increasingly bitter debate over relatively niche policy issues is also stirring broader concerns that the Conservatives look like they are taking two months off from tackling the cost-of-living crisis to do their dirty laundry in public. The party could eventually be punished by voters for that, one MP said.” [The niche policy issue is the Deves meme, which backfired on ProMo Morrison.]
Stupid Tories are incapable of basic desk research to see how well the Deves lead-balloon went down.
An Observer journalist, Andrew Rawnsley, thinks Mordaunt could win. See:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/17/the-march-of-mordaunt-could-take-an-unknown-quantity-all-way-to-number-10
But we’re currently interested in the views of Tory MPs and members, not the general electorate. The anti-trans stuff is likely to have a far greater appeal to these right-wing voters.
Adrian at 8.04 pm
That’s the point of the Deves comparison – look where it has left the LNP in Australia. The key point about Mordaunt is that she is still in the running, something which would be impossible in Australia, partly because the number of MPs in the UK is much larger. All that the RW Tories have thrown at her, apart from bitching about laziness or lack of detail that she has rebutted (and which obviously were much bigger problems for Johnson, for which they perpetually forgave him) is the Deves-type stuff.
According to another Observer overview, Truss is best for Labour’s chances but looks very unlikely:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/17/your-guide-to-the-tory-leadership-candidates-and-whether-theyll-have-opposition-politicians-quivering
If Truss can’t close the gap to Mordaunt by Monday night, she’s unlikely to make the final two. This is what Patrick Flynn predicts, Sunak v Mordaunt, which he doesn’t like at all, as a RW nutter himself.
The other issue with Scottish independence was that the first referendum was before Brexit, so independence would have resulted in them leaving the EU with little prospect of return (as leaving aside the UK blocking entry, Spain also takes a very dim view of secessionist states from EU members due to its problems with Catalonia). Now independence gives them the possibility of rejoining the EU. So the independence camp has a claim that there has been a major change in circumstances.
if a referendum happend in ni it would probaly succeedo on independents to join island sinfain have become very popular latily stergin seems popular buteven though most vote snp they dont want independents
If this geographic sorting by political affiliation continues, such that the Republicans are assured indefinitely of at least a blocking minority if not a majority in the Senate even in the face of a deep loss of overall support, the US faces a serious crisis of democratic legitimacy developing. It’s all very well to have malapportionments, gerrymanders and various electoral distortions, but once it reaches the point of seriously and permanently disenfranchising a large enough part of the electorate you will sooner or later end up with some serious social unrest.
The results of today’s Tory leadership vote will be announced at 5am AEST. I will have a new post tomorrow.
Aaron newton @ #62 Sunday, July 17th, 2022 – 10:47 pm
Aaron, there is a school of thought that the hardest part of a reunification referendum will be getting the Republic to vote to take the North 🙂
‘Tory leadership TV debate shelved amid infighting concerns .. after host Sky News said Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss declined to take part’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62206727
Ray at 2.07 am (AEST)
In any other context with any other media it would be noted that Sunak and Truss had “cut and run” from public scrutiny.
Dr Doolittle says:
Saturday, July 16, 2022 at 2:47 pm
Matt31 at 12.37 pm
Yes, I know the polls. The only time the Yes vote has had a clear lead was in the last months of 2020.
—————
The last poll on independence (reported on 2 July) showed a small lead for independence.
Should Scotland be an independent country? (Panelbase / Sunday Times)
Yes 51% (+2)
No 49% (-2)
This was after the First Minister announced the proposed referendum for 19 October 2023.
Rakali at 6.40 am
Yes, a margin of error poll. Long way to October 2023 in terms of Tory fumbles and externalities, i.e. impact of looming recession.
Indies in Scotland need to get a coherent economic policy which they lacked in 2014. If Sunak wins Tory vote that would help Indies as he won’t appeal to two key demographics: women, who were strongly No in 2014, and those under 25, also largely No.
With referenda, I prefer the polling numbers including the Don’t Knows, that Panelbase was 48-47 Yes with 5% undecided
As I understand it, the SNP have now acknowledged a hard border* with England will be necessary should a future Indy Scotland join the EU
*Mary-Doll and the Yestapo call it a ‘trade’ border but they’re fooling no one 🙂
Dr Doolittle
Indies in Scotland need to get a coherent economic policy which they lacked in 2014. If Sunak wins Tory vote that would help Indies as he won’t appeal to two key demographics: women, who were strongly No in 2014, and those under 25, also largely No.
————
The young are the strongest supporters for independence. The other two groups strongly No in 2014 were European nationals (fear of leaving the EU) and English settlers.
Brexit now means that independence is the surest way to get back into the EU.
New thread.