July 28, 2024 - 1:00pm
The Conservative Party leadership contest is now well underway, with nominations closing tomorrow. Priti Patel yesterday became the fifth candidate to launch a public campaign, after James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat and Mel Stride, with Kemi Badenoch set to join the pack. As the party recovers from its worst ever electoral performance, the choice of leader could be a vital decision to steer the Tories between failure and a return to government. It’s unclear, however, quite what the dividing lines between the candidates will be.
The decision-makers in this election, first Tory MPs and then members, are a far smaller and narrower group than in the general election. They should agree on much more than they disagree, and ideological splits within the party are often overstated. More than that, the candidates are acutely aware of this. So far, rather than seeking to stand out, they are squabbling over the same ground.
A hard line on immigration is almost taken as a given in this contest. Even Tugendhat, viewed by many as the great moderate hope in this fight, has pledged his openness towards leaving the ECHR if it proves necessary to secure Britain’s borders. Having quickly identified the role immigration played in the Tory defeat and the looming threat from Reform UK, it is unlikely that there will be much deviation from the other candidates on this.
The same seems true of defence and foreign affairs. Both Tugendhat and Cleverly have military backgrounds and have held security and foreign policy-related briefs in government. They are likely to echo one another’s calls to properly fund defence and to take overseas threats seriously. With Tory members traditionally quite hawkish about Britain’s place in the world, the contest will surely coalesce on narrow differences.
Economic policy perhaps offers a little more scope for disagreement. The Tories have to accept that the deterioration in public and private finances was a big driver of their loss. The former is going to be driven home hard by the Labour Party as the leadership contest plays out, with attacks about “black holes” and poor finances coming thick and fast. It might, in some ways, draw something interesting out of the potential leaders.
The Conservative Party is perhaps more economically mixed than some expect. Boris Johnson, after all, won power with promises to restore much pre-austerity spending and with minimal promises on tax. There’s scope for a candidate to again capture that more high-spending Tory mantle — though it’s unclear if anyone other than Johnson could sell it to the members. Equally, with Liz Truss and her supporters largely out of Parliament, it is doubtful that anyone will swing into the contest with the same lust for free markets as the 49-day prime minister.
With the Tory Party reduced to a rump in Parliament, its capacity to produce a leader with new, radical thinking is seriously diminished. In a contest determined by members with a narrow set of often overlapping views, the incentives are to flatter them rather than strike out differently — for instance, Patel yesterday vowed to give grassroots Conservatives more say in policymaking. Right now, it’s hard to see just where the battle lines will be drawn. Even the old dividing line of Euroscepticism feels largely redundant.
This will be a contest in which most of the candidates are stressing their similarities rather than differences, trying to match with the Tory membership rather than surprise them. It may come down more to personality than politics — who the members feel can drag the party back to government. Perhaps the biggest difference will be who is most able to repudiate the previous leadership rather than risk being associated with its failure. For the party, the bigger question will be whether a narrow contest can bring out the ideas required to revive it.
John Oxley is a corporate strategist and political commentator. His Substack is Joxley Writes.
Mr_John_Oxley
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SubscribeNo…Boris Johnson won on his promise to get Brexit done. Everything else was inconsequential for him to be elected.
Exactly! And he achieved that goal!
History suggests the party will go through a succession of ‘no hope’ leaders. They may even get to the point of being able to say the country should and needs to be part of Europe. Only then will they stand a chance of being taken seriously.
A motley crew indeed to stand for the leadership, all deeply complicit in the failure of Tory governments on the economy.
Welfarism has destroyed our economy and our values under the Tories.
So you’re alright Jack? And you couldn’t imagine being unable to pay your bills through mental or physical incapacity?
I think you forgot to mention “self-declared” incapacity.
The current 5 candidates are bunch of total no hopers, I suspect they are only standing in order to do some kind of deal later.
I’m not sure anyone any better will stand. Not much point in it. And not many left to stand with the reduced ranks.
“A hard line on immigration is almost taken as a given in this contest. Even Tugendhat, viewed by many as the great moderate hope in this fight, has pledged his openness towards leaving the ECHR”
The ones that only talk about the ECHR and avoid talking about the ridiculous levels of legal immigration are frauds, the illegals are only a small fraction of the overwhelming levels of immigration. If they only talk about the ECHR that’s code for ‘I’m fine with keeping net migration at 700k’.
Little Tommy Tugendhat is certainly spouting off about leaving the ECHR…but would never actually do it…his class would ostracise him and he would never risk that…
His class? What, you mean the kids he went to elementary school with?
Yes…clearly…
We have taken back control, so every one of those 700k immigrants has been given permission to settle here. And with record low unemployment, and the drastic shortages in social care, the NHS, hospitality and farming it’s not hard to see why.
Talk of what MPs and members are looking for rather misses the point, which is that the tories lost because they lost their voters. It’s what the voters want that counts, and for some bizarre reason they still appear not to have got the memo.
Oh they got right it enough, they just hope they can ignore it…
All of the frontrunners are not-white.
This is lesson to all the snivelling white ‘centrist dads’ who notice things but wont say anything because their Guardian friends might not like them.
It’s ok to be right wing. It’s ok to be conservative. Some non-white people are very right-wing and conservative. So, you don’t need to pander anymore to the dinner guests who read the Guardian and move their heads sharply in the direction of any comment they don’t like.
Guardian readers are racist.
You forgot “condescending and hate-filled.
It upsets me though to see British politicians as Patel does aping Trump by pointing with that inane smile at donors in the crowd. A Conservative vice.
The Independent has Kemi Badenoch as the frontrunner, Robert Jenrick as second, and Tom Tugendhat as third. She’s black, but the other two are white.
The Tory candidates can say whatever they like about the ECHR but as they have zero ability to do anything about it for the next five years and quite possibly longer, its completely academic.
Beyond that, all the candidates would do well to read John Oxley’s Substack post-mortem and draw their conclusions from that.
They did not learn a thing, or if they did, they refuse to apply the lessons out pride or self-interests. Tories deserve everything that coming at them and more. Beatings will continue entail moral improves.
The biggest issue alongside immigration, and possibly more important, is net-zero. This ridiculous ideology is bankrupting the country, making people poorer, robbing the country of manufacturing and industry as we offshore it, reduces energy security whilst increasing prices, harms our national defence and destroys jobs. Net-zero will make this, and future generations, poorer in terms of wealth and health, reduce living conditions and life expectancy. And for what? Because some politicians believe they are Gods and can control the climate.
Building resilience and adaption to climate change as we have always done will cost less and make our futures more secure.
This is the big issue the leadership contenders should be fighting on.
Difficult to tackle it head on though. Might be easier to pay lip-service to it, and then greenwash furiously.
How does it damage energy security to buid loads of wind farms and solar panels?
The real question here is whether Badenoch can “do a Starmer” and rid her party of its left wing in time for the next election. Only if she can do that will the U.K. leave the ECHR.
The Tories have a Left Wing?
That particular bird only has a left wing, hence it couldn’t fly when it needed to…
Sure they do – as long as you count Tony Blair as left wing.
The Parliamentary Conservative party is so small that rotational leadership can give everyone of them a crack.
Perhaps someone might shine above all others amidst the pall of has beens, want to be’s, could be’s, or they could realise they would rather be somewhere else entirely.
Patel is keen to give the Tory members more say as her brand of right wing views panders to their prejudices. The sooner we remove the right of party members to choose the leader the better.
So not keen on democracy… Not too sure who will do the actual footslogging or connect the parachuted in candidate to the local voters…