If right-wing Tories make their mark Labour will surely follow …

Interesting may be the wrong word here. One candidate thinks the path back to political popularity involves stripping working women of their right to maternity leave and ripping up devolution. The other insists Britain’s “special forces are killing rather than capturing terrorists because our lawyers tell us that if they’re caught, the European court will set them free” – presumably hoping that a renewed focus on Britain’s remaining ties to European institutions might get the Brexit gang back together behind the Tories.

The rise and demise of Cleverly’s ­leadership bid – furiously talked up as a sure thing for less than 24 hours – is a ­striking example of the UK’s ­political ­communication machinery at work, ­powered almost entirely by tittle-tattle and fairy stories, and confidence tricks.

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Much like an economist in the wake of an unpredicted financial crash, the ­gossip lobby seems entirely undiscouraged by this most recent failure in their collective ­powers of political analysis. There’s no point being downcast when there’s fawning copy about the malign genius of Morgan McSweeney to write, I suppose.

It’s almost as if the professional politics understanders who’re endlessly platformed to share their searing political insights with the nation are mostly credulous saps whose only consistent function is ­spreading ­whatever talking points their insider ­sources would like them to bigmouth on TV and radio this week.

Because as soon as the news about ­Cleverly broke, the press stenographers were biddably amplifying the sassy and snarky messages they were receiving from unoccupied and presumably rather ­discouraged tribunes of the Labour Party, consoling themselves with a pre-emptive gloat about the choice of leader Tory MPs had served up to party members.

(Image: PA)

The thesis behind the gloating goes ­something like this. You may spot a few ­dubious premises along the way.

Proposition one: Sir Keir Starmer has parked the bus on the Sensible Centre Ground™ of British politics. So long as Labour continue to occupy this ­mythic, winning territory, the Conservatives don’t have a snowflake’s chance in hell of ­making a political recovery any time soon.

This being the case, it is in Labour’s best interests for the Tories to select the ­maddest and most angular candidate available. Now there are two options, both with plenty of edges, each bent on outgoing one another to appeal to the right of the party, each having significant potential to alienate more moderate ­voters.

Experience suggests that the ­Conservative membership will usually choose the maddest of the two ­options ­presented to them until wholesale ­electoral exhaustion and pessimism set in. It took the party eight years of cranky and ­ineffective opposition to alight on ­David Cameron as the solution to New Labour’s hegemony, and he had to wait 10 years to secure a Tory majority in Westminster.

With Jenrick and Badenoch now in play, some cocky Labour MPs think they’re now playing a game of “heads I win, tails you lose” at the next election. They reckon we’re heading back down the time tunnel to the future. Dust off William Hague’s baseball cap, shove a pint into Jenrick’s hands, and send for the next iteration of the Quiet Man – the wilderness years beckon. In politics, as in life, sometimes the wish is the father of the thought.

In fairness, you can see the outlines of a familiar historical pattern here. Rather than engage in painful self-reflection about how the party contributed to its own loss of power, the atmospheres from the recent Tory conference in ­Manchester suggest they might try the post-1997 stratagem of ignoring the drubbing they received, lurching right, while the rest of the population looks on in baffled ­wonder at how a group of people still wholly ­convinced they’re “the natural party of government” still manage to be this charmless and alienating.

If history is any guide, this kind of ­consoling jump towards an ­aggressively right-wing agenda is likely to be ­accompanied by increasingly twitchy and defensive reactions to suggestions they’ve transformed themselves into “the nasty party”, with unresolved European ­obsessions and nothing positive to say to or about anyone under the age of about 53 or earning salaries of less than £53,000 a year.

But a few notes of caution seem more than indicated about the political ­analysis underscoring this. First, it is far from ­obvious that Starmer is in fact occupying political territory which seems sensible or even centrist to the average British voter. This weekend, columns across the press are meditating on how, precisely, Labour managed to squander so much goodwill in just 100 days in office, and how reversible the current trajectory will prove.

Most Labour supporters don’t ­seriously contest they’ve had a bad start. Some ­loyally claim all this bad press has just been got up by the media, that the Tory press has shamelessly applied gross ­double standards, and that the early ­criticism of the new regime is ­already ­exaggerated and unfair. But most ­recognise the ­disappointment is real, and can’t simply be dismissed as bad ­presentation and bungled process.

What isn’t obvious at the moment – but I reckon may become so – is the ­Government’s lack of resilience in the face of threats. And that’s one very good ­reason to be concerned about the broader consequences for political discourse in the UK of Jenrick or Badenoch defining the limits of the mainstream.

Since Starmer took over the ­leadership, the Labour Party’s positioning has – more often than not – been reactive and ­defensive, closing off perceived ­vulnerabilities by servicing media ­demands and agendas, avoiding cowpats, purging critics – defined to a significant extent by their opponents’ agendas and their opponents’ criticisms.

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That's the problem with political triangulation – you might win the election by hammering hard on patriotism, fiscal discipline and being tough on crime, but your scope for change once you win office is essentially defined by your enemies, and any approach to politics beyond the political limits you’ve defined for yourself are unthinkable, cordoned off, verboten. Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules are a powerful case in point.

History sometimes repeats itself – but just as Starmer isn’t Tony Blair, it isn’t ­obvious that Jenrick or Badenoch are ­reincarnated William Hagues or Iain Duncan-Smiths either. Yes, the selection of Jenrick and Badenoch suggests that, in search of votes lost to Reform, the ­Conservatives intend to push the window of acceptable policies further and further to the right.

We’ve talked about the Overton ­window in this column before, and the way ­different political parties can define – and test – the boundaries of the ­thinkable in politics, defining what’s mainstream and what’s extreme, which ideas are framed as moderate, and which ideas are badged and dismissed as radical.

This shift will impact on the ­Conservative Party, but I guarantee you it will also shape the still amorphous agenda and tone of this UK Labour Government, which has acquired even more reasons over the last hundred days to feel nervous about its standing in the polls and the bad press it’s receiving.

If Jenrick or Badenoch begin to make any political headway by punching the bruise of immigration policy, or ­welfare cuts, or criminal justice, would you ­really put serious money on this Labour ­government holding the line?