Christopher Jackson argues that James Cleverly isn’t done yet
Sometimes it matters hugely how you lose. “We didn’t do it,” said James Cleverly at the low point in his career on Wednesday just after finding out he had failed in his bid to be leader of the Conservative Party.
I was very struck by the nature of this video. It exuded confidence and, in fact, leadership. How was he able to do this? Although Cleverly admitted that it was disappointing for him personally, one had a sense in his concession video and throughout his leadership campaign that he wasn’t running solely out of personal motivation.
Speaking to a Finito event last month, he spoke movingly about his love of the Conservative Party, and recalled staying up late as a young man on General Election night, going through the constituency results. His immediate thought after losing this week was to remind the Party that ‘we’re all Conservatives’.
This was gracious in the same way that Sunak’s concession to Sir Keir Starmer was gracious. It might seem a small thing, but this sort of generosity in defeat is the mark of true leadership.
There was no hubris involved incidentally in Cleverly’s defeat, contrary to bogus media speculation. Speaking to members of his team, the instructions were quite clear on Wednesday: all the MPs who wanted Cleverly as leader were instructed in no uncertain terms to vote for him.
With surreptitious stupidity, a handful of MPs took the matter into their own hands, with the consequence that the membership will now not have a centrist candidate to vote for.
In the pub afterwards, Cleverly was reportedly somewhat subdued following the defeat – as who wouldn’t be. But campaign members said he gave each a big hug – as is his style – and thanked them meaningfully for their work.
Another campaign staff member recalled: “He is always like this. He always knows what to do – and power never changed him.” To rise so high, and to retain this core decency is a rare achievement – it is, in fact, worth more than the Conservative leadership, since it is to do with the inner being.
Another recalled starting out as a young political operative. She wrote hundreds of emails to MPs and politicians. Only one replied: James Cleverly.
I once asked the wonderful former Skills minister Rob Halfon which members of the then Cabinet were nice to their staff. He didn’t miss a beat in naming Cleverly and Mel Stride. It is unfortunate that the Conservative MPs, shark-like as always, failed to represent these two bastions of civility in the last two.
Sharks, of course, are unable to swim backwards, and I think there is now something of this trait about the Conservatives. They are rushing forwards on one-dimensional momentum, supposedly for a brilliant kill.
Will they hit the rocks? It seems more than possible. If they do, there seems a real possibility they’ll turn to Cleverly, just as they turned back to Sunak after the Truss fiasco. A list of history’s victors is also a list of those who were at one time or another good losers.
Either way, my suspicion is that Cleverly’s stature has risen irreversibly as a result of the past few weeks.
It was Theresa May who spoke of the Conservatives as the Nasty Party, and eventually became Prime Minister. If the British public were to decide that this new Conservative Party is a trifle abnormal, might not even knuckle-headed Conservative MPs revert to the man who told them so memorably to be normal all along?
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