Tory leader hopeful James Cleverly is channelling Ronald Reagan and offering three things Brits want

AS the marathon for the Conservative leadership drags on, it becomes increasingly clear that the party will never get back to 10 Downing Street by becoming a Reform UK tribute band.

The Tories can never be more Nigel Farage than Nigel Farage.

They should not be trying.

The blues had 14 years to turn all that tough rhetoric about borders and immigration into action.

How did that work out? If the party want to be worthy of Government again, they must claim the moderate centre ground where Keir Starmer won his ­loveless landslide under grotesquely false pretences.

For there is nothing moderate about this Labour Government.

There is nothing remotely centrist about them — apart from Keir’s free seats on the halfway-line at Arsenal.

Robert Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat, Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly — whoever becomes the new Tory leader must ­confront the same dilemma.

How to win back the voters the Tories haemorrhaged to Reform UK without lurching so far to the Right that they repel all those they lost to Labour, the Lib Dems and none-of-the-above indifference.

If those lost millions of ­voters ever wander back into the Tory fold, it will be because the new leader gives them the one thing that Starmer and his gang of sleazy, freebie-loving socialists cannot. Hope.

There is no hope with Starmer, the Imelda ­Marcos of Kentish Town. Labour is anti-aspiration, anti-growth and anti-optimism.

Pro-spite and pro-envy. Labour promise five years of telling you to tighten your belt while they fill their boots.

Our people yearn for hope. Not false promises. Not tough talk. Not empty jam tomorrow chunter about the bright, sunlit uplands of tomorrow.

But hope that things are going to get better.

I look at those Tory candidates and only one of them presents a genuine optimism about the future of our country. James Cleverly.

Can JC see off Reform UK more capably than tough-talking Jenrick, fiery Badenoch or ex-soldier Tugendhat?

Why should he? Reform UK carry the seeds of their own destruction. They are ultimately a one-man band.

The only path forward for the Tories is to remember who they are, and who the British people are.

Tony Parsons

When Nigel eventually finds his gaze drifting beyond the borders of his constituency in Clacton — far more likely if Donald Trump gets a second term as US President — then Reform will surely go the way of UKIP and the Brexit Party.

Without Farage, Reform would be like Chelsea with no Cole Palmer.

Their talent pool is shallow as a puddle. The only path forward for the Tories is to remember who they are, and who the British people are.

Personally, I love the measured optimism and gentle humour of Cleverly.

As the man says, our people want “morning again in this great country”.

I know Cleverly is channelling Ronald Reagan — but it works.

People want optimism. They want vision. They crave hope.

Talking tough just isn’t enough.

Superstar Kris was a one-offerson

FOR any other musician, ­starring in an Oscar-winning movie with Barbra Streisand would be the standout moment of their career.

For Kris Kristofferson, who died last weekend aged 88, his acting turn in 1976 film A Star Is Born felt almost like a footnote.

That’s despite the famous photograph of Streisand gazing adoringly up at him being one of the defining images of the Seventies.

Like Taylor Swift, Kristofferson was a country star who went mainstream, and then went global.

There was nothing typical about Kris.

When most musicians talk about paying their dues, they mean playing gigs in little clubs and grotty bars. Kris paid his dues by working as a janitor for Columbia Records.

Incredibly, Kristofferson was the man who mopped the floor and emptied the ashtrays during Bob Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde recording sessions.

Kris went on to write songs – For The Good Times, Help Me Make It Through The Night, Me And Bobby McGee, Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down – that were at least as good as ­anything Dylan ever did.

Great singers Willie Nelson, Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash were Kristofferson’s biggest fans.

Kris was physically unlike any other musician. He was not a skinny kid in tight jeans. Kris was a teenage athlete.

He went to Oxford University on a Rhodes ­Scholarship – like Bill Clinton – and won a boxing blue.

He flew helicopters in the US Army before quitting his ­military career and relocating to Nashville.

He was the only singer-songwriter who looked good with his shirt unbuttoned to the navel. Women loved him.

There was an old-school, macho masculinity about KK.

There is a famous photograph of Kris with Bob Dylan, and it looks like Darth Vader standing next to Mr Bean.

Critics will tell you Kris couldn’t sing for toffee and played guitar like a bad busker.

And maybe that’s true.

But he wrote some heartbreaking songs that will endure for as long as human beings listen to music.

Bach is best beauty

ACCORDING to computer analysis, the most beautiful Bond girl of all time is Lea Seydoux, who played Madeleine Swann in 2015’s Spectre and 2021’s No Time To Die.

That is based on the golden ratio of the human face – the mathematical formula designed to calculate beauty.

I have to unplug that computer.

The most beautiful Bond girl of all time is Barbara Bach, Anya Amasova (Agent Triple X) in 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me.

Barbara is also the only Bond girl who went on to marry a Beatle – she later became Mrs Ringo Starr.

AJ’s A OK

IN the aftermath of Anthony Joshua’s devastating loss to ­Daniel Dubois, I’ve seen AJ described as “a bad guy trying to be good”.

We know Joshua had a troubled youth, landed in some bother with the law and was saved by boxing.

But a bad guy trying to be good? I don’t think so.

This warm, decent, likeable man always struck me as exactly the opposite.

A good guy who struggles to be bad.