Conservative Leadership 2024: Post-Conference Update

MPs move towards third ballot

The remaining four candidates set out their stalls at the Party Conference in Birmingham

I did not attend the Conservative Party Conference this year (in truth, I haven’t been in years) but this conference represented a major milestone in the 2024 Conservative Leadership Election, as the four remaining candidates to replace Rishi Sunak set out their respective stalls to the Party faithful last week.

The importance of this stage of the contest can hardly be overstated. It is not a regular feature of Tory leadership elections but the last time it happened it was considered quite decisive. For this, one must cast one’s mind back nearly 20 years, to the 2005 Leadership Election. David Davis entered that contest looking like the ‘obvious successor’ to outgoing leader Michael Howard. Then, as now, we were in Opposition and candidates were vying to become the next Leader of the Opposition.

At the 2005 conference in Blackpool, Mr. Davis delivered his big speech but was widely perceived to have performed poorly. I watched the speech, and I would say it was competent but underwhelming. Meanwhile, Mr. Davis’ younger rival, David Cameron, gave a barnstormer of a speech, delivered without notes, and Mr. Cameron ultimately left Blackpool as the darling of Conference. It led to a steep turnaround in their relative chances. That morning, Mr. Davis had been the clear favourite, with Mr. Cameron trailing in third place behind Kenneth Clarke. By that same evening, the bookies had Mr. Cameron as the odds-on frontrunner. As we all know, Mr. Cameron went on to win the leadership and, in due course, the 2010 and 2015 general elections.

I have tagged each speaker with a link to their speech on YouTube.

The first up on the main stage in Birmingham last week was Shadow Security Minister Tom Tugendhat. I would characterise the Colonel’s speech as brimming with sincerity and high purpose, but a bit of a damp squib, in that it lacked that ‘wow’ factor he really needed to deliver at this stage of the contest. It was a bit like one of those fireworks, that goes up making all the right noises, only to fizzle out with an anticlimactic ‘pop’. His relative lack of experience speaking at this level probably showed. I anticipate that the Colonel will be the first to be eliminated when MPs vote this week, but he can hold his head up high, having fought a plucky rearguard action and I suspect he will feature prominently in the Shadow Cabinet of whomever succeeds Mr. Sunak.

Next up was Shadow Home Secretary James Cleverly. His speech is being widely touted as the break-out performance of the match. Colonel Cleverly, who came in third place in the first two MP ballots in September, has steadily been building momentum and delivered an assured performance. He is probably the most experienced of the remaining four candidates, as I outlined in my previous blog. He also wins the prize for the best jokes, particularly a good line about being mobilised as a reservist and assuming he would be sent to Baghdad or Basra and being sent… to Luton. Although he arrived in Birmingham trailing behind Mr. Jenrick and Mrs Badenoch, the Colonel left Conference with a spring in his step and the wind in his sails and is now the bookies’ favourite to make it into the final two with Mr. Jenrick. Colonel Cleverly actually came to Billericay on Friday and addressed members of the Basildon & Billericay Conservative Association and he was very impressive.

Former Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick was the penultimate speaker, currently seen as the frontrunner and, at 42 years of age, the youngest of the candidates. Mr. Jenrick is an interesting guy. Formerly seen as a broadly centrist politician, he has recently manœuvred himself to the right of the Party, shouldering past more established figures like Suella Braverman and Dame Priti Patel. He gave a strong performance in Birmingham, and he too put in appearance in Billericay, a week or so before Colonel Cleverly. On both occasions, he majored on immigration and leaving the European Convention on Human Rights. If I am being brutally honest, I worry that Mr. Jenrick is a bit of a one-trick pony on immigration, and I cannot say I found myself entirely convinced that leaving the ECHR is the kind of panacea he seems to think it is. I would not say his speech was a gamechanger. He delivered it without notes or autocue, but it did not lift the roof off Conference like Cameron in ’05.

The final speaker was Shadow Housing Secretary Kemi Badenoch, who is in many ways the ‘firebrand’ candidate in this contest. She gave an uncompromisingly robust speech, centred around hard truths and the need to renew both the Tory Party and the country. There is no denying the attractiveness of her plain-speaking, no-nonsense attitude. My only concern remains a worry that she is just too enmeshed in culture wars that turn off, or simply do not interest, huge sections of the electorate. She dropped a couple of clangers at Conference, seeming to oppose maternity pay (comments she later clarified) and suggesting some civil servants wanted ‘locking up’. But her pitch on stage went well and I suspect she will have been happy with how it went down in the hall.

The ball now goes back into the MPs’ court, with a further ballot this afternoon to reduce the remaining four to three, then another ballot tomorrow, which will give us the final two, who will be presented to the Party membership.

I saw an analysis somewhere (apologies, I can’t remember where, so cannot attribute) that compared the process to the ‘Sorting Hat’ in “Harry Potter”. In this analysis, Colonel Tugendhat was ‘Ravenclaw’ for his intellect and attention to detail. Colonel Cleverly was ‘Hufflepuff’ for his steadfastness and Party loyalty. Mr. Jenrick was ‘Slytherin’ for his cunning and ambition. While Mrs Badenoch was ‘Gryffindor’ for her courage and indefatigability. I think I would broadly subscribe to that. All four candidates have great strengths.

I shall be lobbying our local MP, Richard Holden, to support James Cleverly. We should get the results of the penultimate MPs’ ballot at 3:30 p.m. and then the final ballot ahead of the membership vote will take place tomorrow.