Who will lead Britain’s Conservative Party?
FOR YEARS the task of leading Britain’s Conservative Party has been well-nigh impossible. So ungovernable did the party become during its time in power from 2010 to 2024 that it burned through five leaders (and prime ministers) in eight years. After the drubbing in the general election in July, it is time to replace the unpopular current leader, Rishi Sunak. So overwhelming was the party’s defeat to Labour that just 121 Conservative MPs sit in the new Parliament—the party’s lowest number ever. Though the Conservatives are the official opposition, their chief battle is against irrelevance.
Even so, a cast of characters is keen to replace Mr Sunak. After a vote among Conservative MPs on September 10th, four candidates are left in the race. Much rides on how they will pitch themselves to the party’s annual conference starting on September 29th in Birmingham. The MPs will whittle the list down to two after that. Then the party’s members (the most recent public count, from 2022, puts them at 172,000) will pick the winner, who will be announced on November 2nd.
Robert Jenrick wants to be the tribune of the right. A former lawyer, he aims to appeal to a younger generation of Tories keen for the party to turn a page. In Mr Jenrick’s view that must involve moving away from the centre to neutralise the threat from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK: voters at the last election, he says, “did not feel that the Conservative Party was conservative enough for them”. A hard-line stance on immigration speaks to that, as does his desire to pull Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), a shibboleth of the hard right. Mr Jenrick, a former immigration minister, fell out with Mr Sunak over his plan to process asylum-seekers in Rwanda—because he deemed it did not go far enough. His pitch to the party’s right helped him come top in both ballots. In the second round on September 10th he won the votes of 33 of his parliamentary colleagues.
Kemi Badenoch has star power. A former business secretary, she is known for her pugnacity. Born in London and brought up in Nigeria, Ms Badenoch returned to Britain for her A-levels and to study computer-systems engineering at Sussex University. Now shadow housing and communities secretary, Ms Badenoch blames the Conservatives’ implosion on the party losing sight of core principles, above all a belief in a strong yet limited government. As a cultural warrior, she finds it hard to resist battling what she calls “wokedom” at every turn, even though it is not voters’ top priority. As minister for women and equalities, she opposed those who campaigned for more rights for trans people; she also disdains the environmental movement and net-zero targets. In 2022, she came fourth in the Tory leadership race. If she gets through to the final two this time, she has a good shot with the party’s members. In opinion polls, the grassroots like her best.
James Cleverly is unstuffy and likeable, and lacks political enemies. He says he stands for “unity”. The shadow home secretary is seen as a moderate; he also has the most ministerial experience. He has held two great offices of state, overseeing foreign and home affairs—though that also ties him firmly to the record of past governments. Mr Cleverly joined the army straight out of school and later worked in publishing. Affable and solidly pragmatic (if somewhat prone to gaffes), Mr Cleverly promises a “broad” appeal to win back Tory voters. That includes drumming up support for Ukraine and cutting migration to Britain. Mr Cleverly had reservations about the Rwanda scheme, and is thought to be sceptical of the case for pulling out the ECHR. The question is whether party members are in the mood for a centrist.
Tom Tugendhat, a former security minister, has long been seen as a liberal Tory—at least, until recently. He called out the sleaze and ineptitude of the government of Boris Johnson, the prime minister between 2019 and 2022, whom he loathes. Indeed, he has apologised to voters for the “disrespect and double standards” of recent Tory governments. Now, though, Mr Tugendhat talks more about the twin Tory touchstones of immigration and the ECHR. He wants to cap Britain’s net annual migration at 100,000 (in 2023 it was 685,000). And although more emollient on the issue than Mr Jenrick, he will not rule out leaving the ECHR. But the former army officer and longtime chair of Parliament’s foreign-affairs committee centres his campaign on national security. He came fifth in the Tory leadership contest in 2022. ■