The Conservative Leadership Contest: Is the dominance of the Right here to stay?
On 4 July the Conservative Party suffered a catastrophic electoral defeat against Keir Starmer’s Labour, losing 244 seats, primarily to Labour. Since then, those within and outside the party have called to question what the Tory party stands for in contemporary Britain. To many, the years of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have signified a decimation of ‘traditional’ Tory values and a lean into the right wing factions of the party. This turn has wrought division and factionalisation upon the Tories. The fight for Conservative leadership demonstrates how the political legacy of the preceding years defines the party today and how these questions of ideology continue to dominate the debate.
The Conservative Party conference took place in Birmingham from the 29 September to the 2 October. The conference offered the Tories a chance to redefine the image of the party post election and signify the direction of the party, primarily in consideration of a new leader. The four candidates, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugendhat, showcased their vision for Britain and the future of the Conservative party. After two rounds of voting following the conference, only Jenrick and Badenoch remain.
The elimination of the shadow Home Secretary James Cleverly, in the fourth round of voting came as a shock result. Just days earlier, he emerged as the front-runner in the leadership polls after positive reactions to his speech at the party conference. It calls to question if this twist in the leadership race displays the disarray in the party? Or does it simply epitomise just how quickly loyalties and promises change within the party, especially under the protection of anonymous voting.
The result means the next leader will certainly be on the right of the party, with both Jenrick and Badenoch taking firm stances on immigration and cultural issues.
Jenrick in particular has placed strong emphasis on the issue of immigration. Previously Minister of State for Immigration, Jenrick resigned in December 2023 after arguing the Rwanda policy did not go far enough in its measures to tackle illegal immigration. In a recent piece from his Telegraph column Jenrick stated that “arguments that the views of activist foreign judges and liberal elites were more important than fixing this problem made my blood boil.” Since his resignation, Jenrick’s website states that he has consistently campaigned for tougher measures on illegal migration and a cap on legal migration in the 10,000s.
Jenrick has also expressed an intense defence of Israel arguing he wants the United Kingdom to be “the most welcoming country in the world for Israelis and for the Jewish community”. These stances place Jenrick firmly within the right wing of the party, a faction of the party which has been seen to grow in dominance under the previous governments of Johnson, Truss and Sunak.
Most recently, Jenrick has faced scrutiny over his campaign donations when it was revealed he received £75,000 from a company based in the British Virgin Islands that was later found to have no employees, £300,000 of debts and had never made a profit. These figures surfaced just weeks after Jenrick criticised the Labour government’s acceptance of donations.
Kemi Badenoch has also made extensive noise in the media in recent weeks around various cultural issues, something that seems not uncommon for Badenoch. Kemi Badenoch is the MP for North West Essex and the Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. She has emphasised the importance of ‘principles’ such as personal responsibility, freedom of speech, family and free markets in her leadership campaign. Her campaign is named “Renewal 2030” based on her emphasis on the need to “restate” what it means to be Conservative.
Speaking at the Tory party conference, Badenoch repeatedly referenced her ability to “say it like it is”, arguing she can “cut through”. However, controversy in recent weeks has caused many to question the line between straight-talking honesty or simply creating controversy and noise in the media. Most recently, Badenoch was criticised for arguing that “maternity pay is excessive” and has gone “too far”. Additionally, in an article in The Sunday Telegraph Badenoch suggested “not all cultures are equally valid” as part of her stance on immigration, focusing less on numbers but on ideas of integration based on ‘British values’ and culture. She also made headlines for suggesting up to 10% of civil servants should be in prison for being “very bad”.
The rate of recent controversy that led some to believe Badenoch would be seen as too decisive for the electorate. Many have also emphasised Badenoch’s reaction to these cases of controversy as indicative of her character. In relation to the maternity pay issue, Badenoch accused the media of “misrepresenting” her comments and when asked to name which cultures were “not equal” she refused to supply a direct answer. Such examples have led to suggestions of Badenoch as simply creating drama, rather than acting as a principled and ‘straight talking’ politician she claims.
Conservative Party members are now left with the decision between Jenrick and Badenoch, a choice inherently limited to the right of the party with Tom Tugendhat’s failure at the third round of voting seeming to signify the defeat of moderate, centrist Conservatism within the party. Tugendhat had based his campaign around creating a “decisive break with the past” and “a leader who can return us to the core values that our country rightly expects from its politicians”. Clearly Tugendhat sought to create a sense of distance from the Johnson and Truss era of the party. However, it appears the party instead saw him as too weak on issues like immigration, having been accused of downplaying such issues.
These developments in the leadership contest have certainly created a strong sense for many that the dominance of the right within the Conservative party is here to stay.
Words by Sadie Kendall
