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It’s the final day of Conservative conference and thus the final opportunity for the party’s leadership candidates to lay out their case before MPs and the grassroots.
This morning, Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch were in turn granted a 20-minute time slot on the conference main stage to address activists and, hopefully, inspire some last-minute momentum. How did they fare?
Tugendhat, up first, spoke glowingly of the “energy” and “determination” he had sensed at conference — a welcome reprieve after a “bruising” general election campaign. He made a point of addressing former Tory voters beyond the main hall, declaring at one point: “I want to make you proud to vote Conservative again.”
Then, in a message catered specifically to activists, he continued: “Labour have told us who they are. They are rudderless, selfish, and greedy. They are taking us back to the 70s and the politics of division.”
Cleverly arrived on stage next, warning his fellow Conservatives not to become “the grumpy party”.
“Let’s be enthusiastic; relatable; positive; optimistic. Let’s sell the benefits of a Conservative government with a smile. We will not win back voters by pretending to be something we’re not. We win back voters by being honest, by being professional, by being Conservative”, he added.
Jenrick, the race’s new frontrunner, echoed Sir Tony Blair’s famous New Labour rebrand by calling for a “New Conservative Party” in his speech. He outlined five policy priorities, namely: to reject mass migration, reduce the cost of energy, ramp up building, reduce the size of the state and unite different communities.
Badenoch, meanwhile, pledged to undo the legacy of Sir Tony, who imposed “ever increasing social, economic and legal control”. She argued her colleagues refused to combat New Labour’s legacy in government, insisting ministers stopped “acting like Conservatives” and “became managers”. More on her comments here.
But today: in my final Politics@Lunch piece before parliament returns on 7 October, I consider the prospects of the race’s two moderate contenders — Cleverly and Tugendhat. Who is best placed to advance beyond the next two MP voting rounds? Could either win?
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JAMES Cleverly’s conference triumph
The Conservative leadership race is running along two parallel paths, pursued by two competing tribes. The first lane, which has attracted the largest share of media attention, is occupied by Tory doyens Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch — candidates favoured by the party’s ideological maximalists.
This fight on the right sub-contest helps explain why the relationship between the Badenoch and Jenrick camps — despite their obvious ideological affinities — is so fraught. In recent weeks, the former has recurrently accused the latter of dirty campaign tricks and aggravating rows at her expense. But Jenrick’s ruthlessness this contest should be of little surprise to his prime rival: they are, after all, advancing the same claim to the Tory throne.
In this way, one of Jenrick or Badenoch looks set to do battle with a candidate advanced by the Conservative Party’s moderate wing. And they will be confident. Recent leadership scuffles suggest that the Tory grassroots perennially favour the candidate who boasts the most trenchant right-wing “vibes”. To be labelled a “moderate”, in effect, is to ensure one’s candidacy goes the way of Jeremy Hunt’s in 2019 — or Rishi Sunak’s in the summer of 2022.
Nor do “One Nation” MPs much excel in these intra-party scuffles. Moderate MPs nominally make up a “faction” — but they take far from enthusiastically to “factionalism”: they are “wet” by name and, typically, wet by nature.
These reasons help explain why the bulk of media coverage this contest has gone to Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick’s candidacies. The winner of the fight on the right, in the end, tends to win the race as a whole. The victor in the one nation brawl, at best, might earn a middle-ranking shadow cabinet post. (More broadly, of course, this explains why Jenrick chose to run this race as a strident right-winger, shunning the soft Cameroon reputation he once held).
The candidate destined to play the role of defeated moderate, therefore, will be one of Tom Tugendhat or James Cleverly. Both candidates picked up 21 backers in the last ballot of MPs — 7 and 12 votes behind Badenoch and Jenrick respectively. But they are also primed to pick up the 16 votes won by Mel Stride, himself a vanquished moderate.
Following the next round of MP voting round on 9 October, therefore, it is widely expected that the Conservative Party’s moderates will begin to coalesce around a single champion. Who, then, will the One Nationers thrust forth?
This, ultimately, is a question complicated by the fact that Cleverly and Tugendhat have both delivered strong conference performances.
James Cleverly’s leadership pitch
Cleverly, for one, is making the most overt pitch for the mantle of “unity candidate” — a role he is well-placed to play having served as a loyal minister in all of Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak’s administrations. This also means Cleverly boasts the most political and cabinet experience of any of the remaining candidates, including as an election-winning party chairman (in 2019) — a credential he is keen to stress.
Indeed, as the former home secretary recently told the BBC’s Political Thinking podcast: “I’ve outperformed all the other runners and riders by a country mile … If you Tipp-Exed the words ‘James Cleverly’ off my political CV and slid it across the desk, you’d look at it and go, ‘bloody hell’.”
Cleverly, a media-savvy and affable communicator, has also proved the most reticent of the candidates when drawn on the race’s rolling rows. Earlier this week, Jenrick and Tugendhat wasted no time in explicitly rebuking Badenoch over her now-disavowed maternity pay remarks. But Cleverly largely stayed away from the controversy; perhaps to procure an endorsement from Badenoch in time (she could well lose out in the race to the final two).
Cleverly’s positive pitch, however, is that he wants a return to hopeful, “smiley” Conservatism. Speaking at a recent fringe event, he referred scornfully to the “harsh and shrill” tone deployed by Tory spokespeople over recent years. And in the aforementioned BBC podcast, he urged his party to appear less “moany” and “negative”; today, Cleverly called for a Conservatism that is more “enthusiastic, relatable, positive, optimistic”.
“Let’s be more normal”, was his central clarion call.
The primary implication of Cleverly’s pitch is that the road to Tory recovery does not run through a combative or muscular mode of conservatism — what the party faithful might view as ideologically pious, but others as irrelevant and performative. The former foreign secretary doesn’t just want his party to pick its battles better, but to fight those battles more constructively.
Cleverly has even admitted that the “Stop the Boats” pledge, which he repeated incessantly as home secretary from November 2023 to July 2024, was a political error. Other Conservative figures, when drawn on Cleverly’s comments, have struggled to disagree.
To my surprise then, the shadow home secretary’s diagnosis of this pernicious Tory “perception” problem has gone down well among both MPs and members. More than this even: Cleverly’s messaging and optimistic tone has perfectly fit, even set, the mood of the conference — which feels far less miserly than many media doomsayers foretold.
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Tom Tugendhat’s leadership pitch
Tugendhat, on the other hand, has proved a far more combative contender, repeatedly voicing discontent at Badenoch’s various controversies and, just yesterday, pointedly slapping down Robert Jenrick over his SAS claims.
In a social media video posted on Tuesday, Jenrick argued that special forces soldiers were deliberately killing terrorists rather than capturing them because of the ECHR. Tugendhat, an ex-serviceman and -security minister, insisted the remarks were “irresponsible”, adding: “I’m afraid that’s simply a fact and if you don’t know it, please don’t comment on military matters, you know nothing about.”
On top of this, Tugendhat’s relative inexperience means he is, of the final four candidates, one of the least tainted by the legacies of recent Tory administrations. That would make him the hardest of all the four candidates for Labour and the Liberal Democrats to attack. However, he has also been described as Nigel Farage and Reform’s dream candidate — a criticism he has struggled to definitively combat.
The verdict
But the biggest asset possessed by Cleverly — and crucially lacked by Tugendhat — is his relative popularity among the public at large. According to recent polling by Techne, the former home secretary is marginally ahead of his three rivals in the race for public approval. 13 per cent of those polled said Cleverly would make the best prime minister — compared to 12 per cent for Jenrick, 10 per cent for Badenoch and 6 per cent for Tugendhat.
(This said, polling conducted by Savanta over the summer suggested Tugendhat is actually the least disliked Conservative candidate nationally, recording a net favourability rating of -3 with the wider public and +28 with 2024 Conservative voters. This, after all, was a trait Keir Starmer rode to victory in July).
Still, while Techne’s figures are marginal, they fit the image Cleverly seeks to portray of himself as a non-divisive Conservative figurehead — and thus the candidate who can lead his party to re-election in one term.
But for this argument to resonate, it relies on Conservative members placing the prospect of winning the next election over true blue principle when they cast their vote. That, it is worth stressing, is not the path the Tory grassroots chose in 2022 when they elected Liz Truss as leader.
MPs, however, already aghast at the horrors of opposition, will surely reflect positively on this aspect of Cleverly’s profile. That, I predict, means he will beat Tugendhat in the next MP voting round and emerge as the race’s last-standing moderate.
Recent YouGov polling also suggests Cleverly stands a far better chance of beating either Jenrick or Badenoch in the final round than Tugendhat, who has, in truth, struggled to shake off his One Nation image. The match-ups are as follows: Jenrick, 52% vs Cleverly, 48%; Badenoch, 54% vs Cleverly, 46%; and Jenrick, 58% vs Tugendhat, 42%; Badenoch, 58% vs Tugendhat, 42%.
The shadow home secretary’s standing will have been improved further by his speech today, which was remarkably well-received by both Conservative activists and media onlookers. Cleverly, accordingly, can probably be viewed as the winner of Conservative conference 2024.
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Lunchtime briefing
Starmer vows to leave ‘Brexit years behind’ as Labour pursues EU relations reset
Lunchtime soundbite
‘From attacking maternity pay or the minimum wage, to criticising our armed forces — these are dangerous and reckless ideas, from Tory leadership contenders who are out of touch with what matters to the British people’
— Lucy Powell, leader of the House of Commons, comments on the Conservative leadership contenders’ conference speeches.
Now try this…
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‘Robert Jenrick inches ahead, but Kemi Badenoch isn’t out of the race yet‘
The i’s Kitty Donaldson writes that Jenrick is by no means the runaway winner with the party’s membership. (Paywall)
‘Tony Blair’s tips for a Tory revival’
The former prime minister says the Conservatives must unite and heed concern over immigration. Via Politico
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