Narrowing the field
MRM head of editorial Edmund Greaves looks at the start of next week’s Tory leadership contest voting and what it means for the political cycle.
The Conservative Party begins narrowing its field of candidates for a new leader next Wednesday, 4 September.
The results of the contest will dictate what the chief opposition to a very politically powerful Labour Government looks like.
The Tory leadership contest holds repeated ballots of MPs, with candidates at the bottom of each round dropping out until two are left. These final two then go to the membership for a final vote.
The last leader to be elected this way was Liz Truss, who was quickly defenestrated. Rishi Sunak replaced her without a contest – a so-called ‘coronation’.
However, this time around we’re having an elongated process where the list will be whittled down to four by 11 September.
Those final four will then be given the opportunity to pitch their visions at the Conservative Party conference, which takes place between 29 September and 2 October.
The final MP ballots will then take place on 9 and 10 October, with the final membership vote set for 31 October. The final winner will be announced on 2 November.
The current candidates with enough support to enter the initial ballot of MPs are as follows:
- James Cleverly, MP for Braintree and shadow home secretary
- Priti Patel, MP for Witham and former home secretary
- Robert Jenrick, MP for Newark and former secretary of state for housing and communities
- Kemi Badenoch, MP for Saffron Walden and shadow secretary of state for housing communities and local government
- Mel Stride, MP for Central Devon and shadow secretary of state for work and pensions
- Tom Tugendhat, MP for Tonbridge and Malling and shadow minister for security
All these candidates come with ministerial pedigrees of one sort or another. It’s not hard considering how long they were in power.
Some of them, such as Mel Stride, have wafer-thin majorities in their seats. Stride returned to Parliament this year with a majority of just 61 votes.
The challenge for the new leader
Labour, with political power in its back pocket, is making difficult and unpalatable choices such as means testing winter fuel payments, hiking public sector pay, banning smoking outdoors in public areas and what is increasingly being trailed as a series of potentially painful tax rises to come in the Autumn Budget.
These will all be politically easy targets to rail against for a new Tory leader, but any attack will be tempered by the fact that these choices are being made precisely because of the failures of the last 14 years.
This week, Keir Starmer warned of difficult times ahead. The leader of the opposition, whoever that is, will have a fine line to tread, with Reform on the right of them and Lib/Lab/SNP to the left.
After 14 years in power, the Tories will need a truly different leadership voice to attempt to rebuild their offering to voters. They also have a long journey ahead to the next general election. It will certainly be a marathon rather than a sprint to build that new message.