In ousting Cleverly, the Conservatives have lost their last claim to normality

Despite everything, including an almost total lack of interest on the part of the public, the Conservative leadership election, now moving towards the final stage of its elephantine gestation, does matter.

Whether Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick becomes the leader of the opposition when the Tory membership make their choice by the end of the month, the winner will be the person most responsible for holding the government to account – hardly a trivial matter, even if it can feel futile and a thankless task.

They will have to build a team that will challenge and scrutinise Sir Keir Starmer and his colleagues, in the Commons and beyond. Mr Jenrick or Ms Badenoch will be presenting themselves, with a straight face, as the only realistic alternative prime minister whenever the next general election comes. Either, it is fair to say, will need to “grow” in the job.

In the meantime, they have the daunting task of taking the Tories from their worst defeat since the dawn of democratic politics to becoming a credible replacement administration. Low on cash, desperately short of activists, denuded of talent, discredited and demoralised. It is a challenge that few would relish taking on. But the Tories now have two individuals who apparently believe not only in miracles but that they can perform them.

Only a day ago this did not seem the most likely outcome. Far from it, indeed. For a moment, it seemed like James Cleverly’s parliamentary colleagues, at least, had heeded his plea that they “be more normal”. Of the three who went into the last round, common sense and the available polling suggested that Mr Cleverly was best placed to lead the revival. In some contrast to Ms Badenoch and Mr Jenrick, the more people saw of him the more they warmed to him.

Sadly for Mr Cleverly, his party and the country, the sophisticated members of the parliamentary Conservative Party have suddenly reversed what seemed his unassailable lead among them and dumped him unceremoniously into third place, albeit narrowly. Perhaps something went wrong with the crosscurrents of tactical voting.

Soon after the shock result of the ballot was announced, Mr Jenrick declared: “This is not about left or right.” Correct: it’s about right or right. What is clear is that, for the first time, the Conservative membership will have to choose between two right-wingers, and indeed two of the most extreme representatives of that wing of their party ever to have come this close to power.

The lurch to the hard right that began in the aftermath of the 2016 EU referendum seems to be reaching its final denouement, and a more populist, nationalistic and economically impossiblist version of Conservatism than even Boris Johnson or Liz Truss represented.

Of this Jenrick-Badenoch contest, it may be said that neither of them was sufficiently well thought of to be trusted by past leaders with high office, and both lack experience (including the hard slog of opposition).

Mr Jenrick is the less authentically hard-right figure because he voted Remain and was a loyal Sunakian until it seemed his career would be better served by a well-timed late resignation on principle over immigration, at a point when the last hopes of winning the general election had evaporated. The cynical betrayal of his old friend Rishi was palpable.

Mr Jenrick’s policy stances since then, such as an unequivocal pledge to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, and a bizarre idea about flying the Israeli flag at UK Border Control posts, seem aimed at compensating for, and obscuring, his previously more centrist views. Mr Jenrick brings to mind the old wisecrack made by the comedian Bob Monkhouse: “The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

There is no doubting the authenticity of Ms Badenoch, and the sincerity of her belief in herself is close to messianic. No wonder that she comes across so often as pathologically patronising, despite her own comparatively slight achievements in office.

It is in fact difficult to judge which might be the more dangerous: Mr Jenrick as a bit of a charlatan who doesn’t really believe in the crazier stuff he comes out with, or Ms Badenoch who thinks it is just plain common sense.

In what might be termed a “meta gaffe”, Ms Badenoch recently bragged that: “I never have gaffes… Or apologising for something… That’s not what I meant… I never have to clarify… Because I think very carefully about what I say”.

This is the prospective leader who suggests charging up front when using the NHS, reducing the burden of maternity pay on businesses, and claims that she “became working class” after a shift at McDonald’s. She wants to weaken renters’ and workers’ rights, and appears to want the Office for Budget Responsibility scrapped, and the courts and the Bank of England neutered. Heaven knows what she’d say if she wasn’t so fastidious about her public statements.

However, whether it is Mr Jenrick or Ms Badenoch who wins, what is quite disturbingly certain is that the Conservatives are headed to the fringes – and it will do them no good.

Bitter experience should teach every political party that general elections are usually won and lost on the centre ground. The main exceptions are where the previous administration was so exhausted or incompetent that change was inevitable. The others are those rare occasions when the political centre actually shifts to the left or the right, and a sea change is underway.

Fifty years ago a confluence of such trends gave the Tory leadership to Margaret Thatcher – and, in due course, the premiership and a decade in power for her party. The hope the Conservatives seem to be invested in seems to be that history will repeat itself, and the general election of 2028 or 2029 will echo that of 1979 – a one-term Labour government collapsing under the strain of its own contradictions and failures, turbocharged out of office by the voters yearning for a fresh start, having moved decisively to the right (and denounced their own recent record in government).

This is the “high-risk, high-reward” strategy that the Conservatives now seem set upon – the chance that the 1980s can be replayed in the 2030s. (Ms Badenoch’s campaign is self-consciously entitled “Renewal 2030”, and not unlike the Trumpian “Project 2025” in ambition).

Well, it could happen, but it is at least as likely that it would not, and that the public would rather another dose of more moderate attempts at reforming the public sector and the economy more widely. There is also the distinct possibility that, if there is a public mood for a sharp change in direction, the populist Reform UK and Nigel Farage would be the principal beneficiaries, bogus as their policies are.

How should a new Tory leader respond to this threat from the nationalist populist right? The lesson of the last decade is that it is impossible to out-Farage Mr Farage, and that any attempt to do so will merely alienate the much larger reservoir of moderate voters who should be more open to persuasion about voting Conservative than they are now.

A deal with Mr Farage may seem attractive, as a way to “unite the right”, but that is purely superficial. In the end, it would surrender the party to people who do not believe in Conservative values, and their damaging, cranky, impractical policies would drive at least as many voters away as they would attract. Wisely, neither Ms Badenoch (about whom Mr Farage has spoken favourably in the past) nor Mr Jenrick seem keen on a dalliance with the erratic Mr Farage. Yet.

If Ms Badenoch does win the contest – on the assumption that the more established and reliably right-wing candidate presented to the more right-wing membership usually does – then the Tory party will be taking a distinct gamble with both its own future, and that of the nation.

Ms Badenoch does not feel like someone who understands the priorities of the British people, who are not permanently laser-focused on migration, trans rights and Islamophobia. Even Ms Badenoch cannot beat Farage at his own game, and she is obviously ill-suited to attract those voters who’ve decided that Sir Ed Davey best reflects their view of the world, or that Labour should be given more time.

Losing support to the far right and to the centre next time around really would despatch the Conservative Party to the wilderness – and that is precisely and predictably what would happen with the high-risk, gaffe-prone Ms Badenoch, or indeed Mr Jenrick, being offered as Britain’s next prime minister. In the words of the recently ousted Mr Cleverly, the Tories should have chosen someone “more normal”.