Did ‘rogue’ voting and botched plot by MPs cost Cleverly’s shock loss in Tory leadership race?
So what went wrong? What caused James Cleverly to slump from frontrunner and favourite to make the final two in the Tory leadership race to humiliated loser?
The answer, according to senior Tory MPs, is that some of his backers “went rogue” and voted for Robert Jenrick in a botched attempt to knock Kemi Badenoch out of the race.
It’s also claimed that a group of at least five MPs voted for Mr Cleverly 24 hours earlier to boost his vote and make the voting figures look as if he was home and dry, fully intending to switch to Ms Badenoch in the final round.
Politics latest: Cleverly ‘may have made catastrophic move’
So the shock result, which was greeted by gasps of astonishment when it was announced by 1922 Committee chairman Bob Blackman, was the result of a combination of indiscipline, naivety and dirty tricks.
But to be fair to Mr Cleverly, he appears to have been the victim of these shenanigans – the tactical voting, vote lending and deals – rather than the instigator or even willing accomplice.
After the third round of voting in which he polled 39 votes, to 31 for Mr Jenrick, and 30 for Ms Badenoch, he told Sky News he wanted nothing to do with any deals and simply wanted MPs to vote for him in the final round.
And Tory MPs who attended Boris Johnson‘s book launch in Westminster along with Mr Cleverly told Sky News his message to supporters and well-wishers there was exactly the same: no deals, no lending of votes, no clever tricks.
But those Tory MPs who thought they were being clever by trying to manipulate the voting to ensure a Cleverly-Jenrick contest in the members’ ballot were being too clever by half.
On the Politics Hub on Sky News, Conservative commentator Tim Montgomerie told Sophy Ridge the Cleverly team was “absolutely livid” with former cabinet minister Grant Shapps, who chaired his campaign.
Mr Montgomerie said Mr Shapps was being accused of “mucking up his votes spreadsheet” and costing Mr Cleverly the leadership. “They’re blaming him for this mess-up today,” Mr Montgomerie claimed.
Earlier, a senior Conservative backbencher told Sky News immediately after Mr Cleverly’s disastrous exit that his supporters had made a catastrophic mistake by lending votes to Mr Jenrick.
That prompted a very revealing response from the Cleverly team, who insisted: “There was absolutely no coordinated vote lending from our campaign at any point.”
Quite. No “coordinated vote lending”.
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But there was unauthorised vote lending and “rogue” vote lending, which led to Mr Cleverly’s vote dropping by two and Ms Badenoch’s going up by 12 and Mr Jenrick’s up by 10.
One veteran of Tory leadership elections claimed it was the biggest calamity since 2001 when Tory MPs voted out the favourite, Michael Portillo, and ended up with Iain Duncan Smith as leader. IDS lasted just two years.
When he spoke to Sky News after his surge in support in Tuesday’s vote, Mr Cleverly was cautious and taking nothing for granted about making the final two contenders.
How wise he was to take nothing for granted. But that won’t have made his spectacular ejection from the leadership race any less painful.