Robert Jenrick’s in front for Tory leadership contest… but he’d help himself by keeping slightly lower profile
A CONSERVATIVE leadership contest is defined by the structure set down by William Hague in 1998, when party members were first given a say.
MPs whittle it down to the final two, and then the finalists are put to the membership.
This means during the early rounds there are effectively two races going on, with candidates trying to consolidate support on one wing of the party or the other to get their place in the membership round.
It’s no different this time.
Of the six hopefuls vying to succeed Rishi Sunak, three (James Cleverly, Mel Stride, and Tom Tugendhat) are running broadly from the Left, and three (Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick and Priti Patel) from the Right.
Of course, these slots aren’t formally guaranteed to one wing or another.
READ MORE ON OPINION
In the MP rounds there is plenty of scope for personal relationships (and the trading of favours) to trump ideological considerations, and with the new leader not in place until November 2, a long race leaves plenty of time for an early favourite to stumble.
As it stands, it looks as if the final will be Tugendhat versus either Badenoch or Jenrick — and history suggests that whoever secures the Right’s candidacy will probably win the membership vote.
(It says a lot about the past 14 years that of the six contenders, only two have held one of the so-called great offices of state — and given the state of the courts, police and immigration system, both Cleverly and Patel are more likely to find their time at the Home Office a hindrance than a help.)
On the One Nation side, Tugendhat does not decisively outpoll Cleverly among the public or party members.
Most read in The Sun
The two drew level in our most recent Conservative Home survey of members’ first preferences.
But Tugendhat’s campaign has been long in the making and he reportedly has a solid lead among MPs, which is what counts in these early rounds.
It isn’t impossible for Cleverly to close the gap.
But he has come unstuck in the MP round before.
In 2019, he called off his leadership campaign less than a week after launching it.
On the Right, Badenoch has been the clear early favourite.
In our most recent survey she gained seven points to take a full third of members’ first preferences for leader.
But this has made her a target, both for malicious civil service leaks from her time in government and for public attacks from Tory MPs, most recently for her low- profile response to the riots.
Some right-wing MPs are also concerned that while Badenoch has been strong and articulate on cultural issues, they have heard very little from her on tax, economics, and the size of the state.
All this has helped Jenrick, who recently overtook her as the bookies’ favourite.
Slick media blitz
Remarkably, this one-time Cameroon moderniser seems to have successfully transformed himself into the Right’s favoured champion.
It hasn’t hurt that he seems to have by far the best-prepared campaign, which opened with a slick media blitz and the only proper launch event of any of the candidates.
He also scored a big strategic win before the contest even started by winning over MPs such as Danny Kruger and Sir John Hayes, key allies of Suella Braverman, and torpedoing her own campaign before it left the harbour.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
Yet like Badenoch, he’s finding that life gets harder when you’re out in front, and after a couple of self-inflicted injuries (most obviously saying he’d vote for Donald Trump), his supporters are hoping he’ll try to keep a slightly lower profile for the next few weeks.
Henry Hill is the Acting Editor of Conservative Home.
GIVE US HONESTY ON FUTURE
SO much for the horse race.
But speaking as a Tory member, the most important question is whether or not any of the candidates have what it takes to rebuild our party.
This is the most marginal parliament, in terms of individual majorities in seats, since 1945.
That means even a small revival could take a chunk out of Labour at the next election, but also that even a small slip could see an even worse (and probably fatal) rout in 2029.
I’m looking for a candidate who has an honest and convincing explanation for how our party managed to achieve so little with 14 years in government.
And an up-to-date diagnosis for what ails Britain today – not just another attempt to reheat the prescriptions Margaret Thatcher offered in 1975, or David Cameron in 2005.
Sadly, we haven’t seen much of that yet.
The party understandably wants to avoid prolonged public bloodshed of the sort we saw between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss in 2022.
But that risks suppressing a debate about ideas that the Conservatives urgently need to have.
It is no use having a three-month debate on “competence” that avoids the question of what a properly delivered Tory programme ought to have been.