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September 5, 2024 - 7:00am
Two months after the worst election result in Tory history, the first votes have been cast for the next leader of the Conservative Party. The headline is that Priti Patel is out. After finishing bottom of the pack with 14 votes, the former home secretary’s bid for the Conservative crown is over.
The result was reminiscent of the tight margins of previous leadership battles. When MPs first voted in 1997, just four votes separated the bottom three candidates. In 2001, there was a tie for last place. And in 2005, the backing of only four MPs was the difference between dead last and fighting another day. It proved similarly close today. Patel was only two votes behind Mel Stride and three behind Tom Tugendhat.
Chief among Patel’s problems was her ratings with the public. In spite of being off the front line for over two years, she was the least popular candidate in the contest. Two polls last month told the story: one from Savanta, which gave her the lowest net favourability score of any candidate (-30), and an Ipsos-Mori survey which showed she was rated as the least likely to do a good job as leader (a net score of -27). Too many MPs concluded that a party reduced to 121 MPs and less than a quarter of the vote couldn’t afford to take on a leader with such poor ratings.
Riding high after the first vote is Robert Jenrick, who is now the frontrunner. Jenrick, who resigned from Rishi Sunak’s government over immigration and has made restoring trust on the issue a key part of his campaign, had been expected to top the poll having attracted more public supporters than any other candidate. But the result was better than expected: his two-MP lead over Kemi Badenoch in declared backers (17 vs 15) grew to six when MPs voted (28 vs 22).
It’s perhaps unsurprising that for the first time in a Tory leadership battle the two leading candidates — Jenrick and Badenoch — are widely seen as being on the Right of the party. What’s not yet clear is whether they will stay out in front.
History offers an ominous warning for Jenrick in particular. In all three contests the last time the Conservatives were in Opposition, the candidate who led on the first ballot always lost their lead by the final one. Worse, they never went on to win the contest. The risk for Badenoch is that she slips into third and loses out on what was widely assumed to be her rightful place in the decisive members’ ballot. Both will now be seeking as much support as possible from Patel’s former backers.
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