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September 3, 2024 - 7:00am
As MPs return to Westminster this week, the Tory leadership will finally end its Phoney War stage. While Labour spent the summer recess having to react to the country’s problems and preparing its legislative agenda, the Conservatives have been weighing up six potential leaders. This week and next, they will whittle them down to four. The contest is starting to get real.
The leadership votes are usually a major source of intrigue. Over the summer, MPs will have been considering not just who they want to lead the party but who they think their preferred candidate can beat and who they would least like to see in the final rounds. Votes are likely to be tight but also deeply tactical. With only 50 MPs sticking their colours to a candidate and more than 60 unknowns, there could be all sorts of moves in the corridors of power as the blocs coalesce.
We know that at least one of the big names will leave the contest in the next 10 days. Mel Stride’s campaign already looked like an outside shot, and little over the summer has suggested that he has built the momentum to make it to the final four. Leaving with him, however, will be one of the more famous and fancied contenders — Priti Patel, James Cleverly, Kemi Badenoch, Tom Tugendhat or Robert Jenrick. Whichever of them ends up in the bottom two will shape the contest’s future, with their supporters in both Parliament and the membership having to cleave to someone else.
This shift could cause some division in the party. Often, the views of members and MPs are not aligned. If Parliamentarians push out a candidate the members favour, it could reignite the debate about the balance of power between the two. So far, the contest has been reasonably mild-mannered and has not threatened party unity, but a popular favourite losing out on a narrow vote could surface some post-election rifts.
Pushing into these crucial weeks, we are likely to see more of the divisions between the potential leaders. Nominally frontrunner, Badenoch has only formally launched her campaign this week, keeping things low-key over much of the summer. Her approach takes the fight to Labour on both economics and culture, pitching towards the votes of the more pugnacious Right. Cleverly, on the other hand, has kicked off his campaign with a tilt at more centrist unity.
The division seems to be echoed in the other candidates, with the contest starting to align between those calling for a louder, more red-bloodedly conservative party and those preaching unity. The noisier candidates over the summer, Jenrick and Tugendhat, have broadly taken these positions. The former has gained momentum through putting immigration front-and-centre of his campaign, while the latter has been building a base of MPs from across the spectrum of the party. Patel’s campaign has been perhaps uncharacteristically quiet, with an insider focus on party organisation and the reforms members seem to want.
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