Tory leadership race comes down to a question of character

As the US election cycle starts to warm up, we find ourselves on this side of the pond facing a very different kind of race. The race to become the Democratic nominee seems easy to call in comparison. Britain’s Conservative party, meanwhile, is about to embark on one of the most mysterious processes in all of politics. The wisest bet might be to keep your money in your pocket, or, at least, put a little Stateside on a Biden/Harris ticket which feels to me, at this moment, like destiny.

Here, Boris Johnson is, of course, leading among bookies but as with most favourites, it’s never so straightforward as being a racing certainty. The Tories are a party lacking the grandees of the past; that small but sizable coterie of established grey hairs, all of whom might reasonably be in the running for the leadership. Rather, we have a very mixed field. We have an excess of ambitious youngbloods who have yet to stake much of a place in the public’s imagination. We also have a few quite well-known names struggling to overcome public perceptions. Lastly, there are the candidates who tower above all others and by elevation are perhaps too exposed. They are the old dogs now tasked with trying to prove that they can learn new tricks.

Day by day, of course, we’ll get drawn into the debate about policy. Some of it makes for good reading and the stuff of serious debate. The fact that Jeremy Hunt comes out of the gate critical of his no deal rivals makes his a clever pitch to his parliamentary colleagues, rather than Johnson’s more cavalier approach, promising a no deal from the off that is sure to win favour among the grassroots. Michael Gove’s outside line is more calculated still, avoiding the hard questions for the moment, with his proposal to give EU nationals free UK passports if they were living in the country at the time of the referendum.

Again, it’s all good gnarly politics and it’s important to stress that policies do matter. Yet US pollster Frank Luntz still framed it best when he said: “What matters most in politics is personality. It’s not issues; it’s not image. It’s who you are and what you represent.”

It’s easy to mistake that as a proposition about character but that’s not quite what Luntz is saying. Personality is a medium by which one can express purpose – “It’s who you are and what you represent.” Tory leadership candidates could do a lot worse than look across to America and the strong showing of Joe Biden. Even devoted Biden supporters would struggle to know where he stands on many issues in anything but the broadest sense. (The same, of course, could be said about Trump who was once pro-choice and is now vehemently pro-life.) Yet Biden is riding high because he has worked hard to cultivate a personality that is urbane yet urban, serious but sociable. Even where he’s light on policy, his personality is such that it is convincing voters that he would make the right decision. His challenge is to maintain that belief – commentators are already noting how strongly he’s being handled by those around him.

Consider, by contrast, the candidate with undeniably the strongest grasp of policy and the most forward-leaning in terms of proposals. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has been impressive in nearly every setting except the one that matters. Polls recently put her as the only rival Trump could feasibly beat. The reason isn’t hard to spot and has nothing to do with issues of her gender and everything to do with her being intellectual but ineffectual. The row about her Native American roots continues to hurt her and the video she released “clarifying” her position (being between 0.09 per cent and 1.5 per cent Native American) only added to the sense that she makes bad decisions.

The Conservative leadership contest will be marked by similar questions. Bad ideas can quickly be ditched, brushed aside, and forgotten. Problems of character are infinitely harder to overcome.

Rory Stewart, for example, has shown strong early running because of his canny condemnation of what he has called “Bertie Wooster politics”. His virtue is that, as an outsider, his record is relatively slim. The more he takes the initiative and shows that he can make good decisions, the more he can overcome a few of his more problematic moments, such as that widely circulated gaffe on BBC Radio 5Live when he admitted to “producing a number to try to illustrate what I believe.” His social media presence is clever but is already in danger of overheating. Any more tweets like “Now – if anyone is around and wants to talk – in Kew Gardens – for the next hour” might lead to him being labelled the UK’s version of Beto O’Rourke, in both good and bad senses of the comparison.

Dominic Raab, Sajid Javid and Penny Mordaunt all face the same challenge: proving they have personality (more akin to Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker in the US race). Andrea Leadsom, meanwhile, will suffer because she appeals to too narrow a base. There might not be a direct equivalent on the US left but, if there is, then perhaps it’s Julian Castro: too far to the right for most in the party and prone to gaffs. Certainly, he is the candidate most likely to sign a letter in turquoise ink.

Johnson, meanwhile, is the personification of “Bertie Wooster politics” and obviously the target of Stewart’s jibe. He is also the front runner for a good reason: he is always the front runner. Yet Johnson is also the embodiment of a truth that Frank Luntz never expressed in his maxim: that sometimes there is simply too much personality. Johnson has a history too long and deep to erase with a few clever bon mots. His no deal gambit is a strong opening but, arguably, there is nothing adroit about it and everything that he says is bumbling, gung-ho, and, ultimately, rather naïf. Remind you of anyone?

This is what makes the Tory election contest so different to that occupying Democrats in the US. The US race is dominated by past record. The Tory leadership race is more about process. It matters more about how you run the race than simply what your record of achievement proves. David Cameron came from nowhere because he made clever decisions in that race. The Tories need somebody who will make the right decisions for the party but, more importantly, for the country. That needs to be evident in the character of the person they elect. More than ever, what’s past is gone. Candidates need to prove themselves in the present in order to show they have promise to lead into the future.