You may have become aware of a worsening background hum to British public life. Think of it as “the clamour”. This is the very specific sound heard by Tory MPs reluctantly deciding that it falls to them to answer the call for a leadership bid. The clamour. So many separate clamours. The Tory leadership field is now the size of the Grand National, though unfortunately many of the runners would find themselves intellectually outclassed by a steeplechaser.
In time, the race will be attended by the usual ethical dilemmas. Are the jumps simply too high, or should Andrea Leadsom be able to clear basic questions about gay rights without the screens having to be erected? For now, we must simply welcome newly declared entrants into the paddock, who this week include Andrea and dishonesty’s Esther McVey.
Others are still at the “wide-ranging interview” or “wide-ranging speech” stage of a thinly disguised leadership bid. Last Sunday saw Dominic Raab do an at-home with the Sunday Times, in which he posed with his wife in front of one of those personalised word-cloud pictures. You might have seen these things, perhaps in a chain gastropub, or the section of a gift website with the heading: “He’s Impossible To Buy For!” Dominic’s word cloud included things such as “BBQ”, “Parliament”, “Blackberry and Google” and – genuinely – “marketing”. And on that basis, I think potential Raab voters need to understand that a vote for him is a vote for the kind of man who typically receives brass desk calendars, barcode cufflinks or whisky stones. And, in later years, letters itemising the collateral casualties of his bruising personal ambition.
Almost as gossamer-touched is Matt Hancock, who last weekend had himself pictured for the Times at an actual stud farm. It’s possible you caught up with this via Matt’s app, Matt Hancock MP. If you don’t have Matt Hancock MP, the official app for Matt Hancock MP, you can get it at the App store. I also really enjoy his fragrance lines: Matt by Matt Hancock, Becoming by Matt Hancock, Parkour Sport by Matt Hancock, Matt Hancock Orange Blossom & Cedarwood, Matt Hancock: A Hero Rises and Matt Hancock: Own the Night. And now, Leadership; Matt Hancock. His marketing agency insisted on that semicolon. It’s meaningless but mysterious, and it really helps the product pop on the shelves.
Who else is on manoeuvres? I keep hearing “Penny Mordaunt”, but I do feel I need to hear a bit more about said Penny Mordaunt. All I can tell you now is that some media bylaw decrees that all photos or footage of Penny Mordaunt must feature her forcefully shutting a car door, mid-stride. If it turns out she’s the next corrupt official in Line of Duty, fine. Otherwise, she might want to expand her range.
Meanwhile, I am very much enjoying Amber Rudd’s take on relatable, which this week saw her reminisce about her past career at JP Morgan, “when my trading team acquired a single, comically large mobile phone, which one of us took home each night in order to contact Japanese markets at 2am”. Mmm. These days, every secretary of state has one official phone and one burner to live-leak cabinet meetings.
As for the big hitters, no doubt we’ll be hearing much more from Boris Johnson in due course. We certainly couldn’t be hearing less now. Ditto Michael Gove, who hasn’t been excluded from the running despite his teardrop tattoo.
In many ways, however, the most chilling glimpse of the general calibre is provided by one man. Journey back with me to 2015, before we had strong and stable government – before the referendum settled the issue of Europe for a generation. Behold, an entry on the website of one Steve Baker MP, which features this wholly obscure backbencher standing with a guy in camo gear on a patch of wet grass in front of a Transit. The premise is that Steve has paid a local firm to teach him self-defence, and within a couple of seconds the member for Wycombe is being literally ground into the mud by this genial ex-squaddie, until he finally gets enough breath to yelp his safe word.
This entire vignette, by any reasonable metric, is Baker’s natural level. Yes, he’s managed to get elected to parliament, but he’s basically round the back of a warehouse while some lovable bouncer is being paid to sit on him. Cosmically, this feels right.
But today, the cosmos is disordered. For much of the past year, this madly overexposed nebbish has held Britain’s destiny in his hands. I recently read an interview in which Steve – now a scorched-earth Brexit ultra who calls his hardcore group of ERG holdouts “the Spartans” – uttered the following words: “I would rather be able to go to work scruffy and unshaven, in shorts and flip-flops, programming computers and leading software startups … rather than all the nightmare of being prime minister.”
The phrase “Wait – what?” is overused. But wait – WHAT???? What has happened to reality? I don’t think any of us fought in two world wars, so Steve Baker could say, out loud, that he’d prefer to be incubating the next Facebook than having to nobly acquiesce to some alleged call for him to become prime minister. But even Steve Baker now claims to have heard the clamour. This is where we are – all these Tory leadership candidates are where we are. What on earth is the clamour playing at? Does anyone know our safe word?
• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
