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It’s the penultimate day of Conservative Party conference and the Tories’ surprisingly energetic post-mortem continues in earnest.
Former MPs, lost to the electoral wilderness in July, continue to peruse the conference fringe armed with novel theories that might explain their exile. After Liz Truss accused the Conservative Party (which she represented as a minister for years) of turning Britain into a “socialist” country, today is the turn of the former PM’s erstwhile cabinet ally, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Speaking to a Telegraph fringe event this afternoon, Rees-Mogg argued that Rishi Sunak’s role in Boris Johnson’s downfall helped doom the Conservatives to defeat. “We were changing [leader] too often and we treated the electorate with contempt”, the former business secretary said. “And Rishi must bear his responsibility for that because he wanted to get rid of Boris which was a stupid thing to do, it was a terrible mistake.”
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Meanwhile, Conservative leadership contender Robert Jenrick is facing backlash today over his claim the SAS is “killing rather than capturing terrorists” because otherwise “the European court will set them free”.
That view has been rejected by rivals James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat, the latter of whom insisted the stance “demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of military operations.” More on that row here.
But today: I propose that Robert Jenrick, after all, is still the best placed to win the race for the Tory crown. The former immigration minister is strategically confecting controversies that aid his candidacy, while his key rival, Kemi Badenoch, is doing the opposite.
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Can Robert Jenrick win?
Robert Jenrick’s path to the Conservative leadership always ran through the respective combustions of his two principal rivals on the right: Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch.
Braverman’s implosion, in the wake of the Conservative Party’s seismic defeat on 4 July, arrived relatively fast — and typically spectacularly. Braverman “bowed out” of the leadership contest, having never explicitly bowed in, with a Telegraph op-ed criticising her colleagues for viewing her as “mad, bad and dangerous.”
She claimed “thousands” of activists had urged her to stand, but added: “I’m sorry. I cannot run because I cannot say what people want to hear.”
Braverman was, for many Tory MPs, the embodiment of the intra-party division that Conservative politics must now utterly eschew. Still, in the days following her party’s electoral rupture, the ex-home secretary made little attempt to counter this narrative. She even blamed “virtue signalling” liberal Conservatives for the party’s election defeat.
As such, “the fight on the right” Tory leadership sub-contest was reduced to Jenrick, Badenoch and Priti Patel. And then to just Jenrick and Badenoch after the first ballot of Conservative MPs.
The race rolled into the summer, and the remaining competitors’ strategies came further into view. Jenrick, for one, inaugurated an energetic social media campaign and went searching for the spotlight with a series of media interviews. Badenoch, meanwhile, took some of August off to spend time with family, even missing a hustings event in the process. The move attracted little overt criticism at the time, but may have surrendered early momentum to Jenrick.
In this regard, Jenrick’s unshakeable prominence — bolstered by his first-place finishes in recent MP ballots — has allowed him to foreground his pitch as a wannabe Tory LOTO. In fact, with his flagship policy to leave the European Court on Human Rights (justified with steadily escalating rhetoric), Jenrick has begun to outcompete Badenoch on what it means to be a Tory right-wing champion.
But the most prominent dividing line in this “fight on the right” pertains less to policy or right-wing “vibes”, than it does to Jenrick and Badenoch’s methods of communication. Ultimately, Jenrick has deprived Badenoch of her frontrunner status — maintained over months under Sunak — by subtly eschewing her unique mode of combative politics.
Jenrick’s general strategy has been to restyle himself as a trenchant but steadily competent right-winger, a politician whose principles mirror those of the Conservative selectorate, but who also exudes administrative nous. As I have noted before, Tory MPs and the wider membership — especially those of the party right — surely accept that these traits were lacking in recent champions (Johnson, Truss, Sunak), and are therefore needed to revivify the party cause.
Structurally, Jenrick’s style is better suited to the attritional nature of a protracted leadership contest. Over weeks now, the former immigration minister has remained strikingly on message, sometimes confecting controversies — but only in ways that benefit his pitch and grassroots appeal. His statement that UK special forces are “killing rather than capturing terrorists” has been much-criticised today, but may well boost his standing among the Tory membership.
A “gaffe” (that political faux pas Badenoch insists she’s never committed) is an unintended controversy. An intended controversy, stoked recurrently by politicians in recent years, reflects a strategy.
In this way, it’s not clear who Badenoch was seeking to appeal to when she suggested that maternity pay is “excessive”, later aggravating the row by admonishing her critics as ill-motivated. Why did the ex-business secretary’s camp appear so shocked that her rivals would exploit the row? Is that not the defining rationale of a leadership contender?
As the race’s exposed frontrunner, it is Badenoch’s job to give her competitors scant material. In this sense, she has roundly failed.
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Nor does it seem like Badenoch has learned from this latest in a long line of furores. Speaking from the main conference stage on Monday, the former business secretary raised eyebrows once again by suggesting that the minimum wage is “overburdening businesses”.
“There’s a cafe in my constituency that closed down and the lady who owned it said, ‘I can’t afford to pay the wages any more. I can’t afford minimum wage. I can’t afford for my staff to go on maternity’.”
“We are overburdening businesses”, Badenoch added. “We are overburdening them with regulation, with tax. People aren’t starting businesses any more because they’re too scared.”
These remarks, especially in light of Badenoch’s maternity pay comments, suggest a potential lack of strategic nous. For a supposed leadership frontrunner, though that mantle is fast fading, it’s a Kemikaze approach to lean back into a damaging controversy.
Jenrick’s star has risen in inverse proportion to Badenoch’s this campaign — and the leadership contender, as I have argued before, has evinced real cunning in capitalising so effectively. In fact, Jenrick has been so successful this contest, that he now looks its likely victor.
New polling published today suggests Badenoch’s rolling rows, extended by her excessive pugnaciousness, are taking a toll on her leadership candidacy. According to YouGov, the former business secretary enjoyed an 18-point lead over Jenrick six weeks ago among the Tory grassroots (assuming the two went head-to-head in the final round of the contest). But new YouGov research, conducted for Sky News, shows Badenoch’s lead has been cut to 4 points — 52 per cent to Jenrick’s 48 per cent.
Still, it isn’t a given that Badenoch will even make it to the final two and the membership voting stage. Over recent days, Tory MPs will have been keenly attuned to Badenoch’s conference controversies and, for many, their doubts about her abilities as a political operator will be confirmed.
(For what it’s worth, Jenrick would best Cleverly and Tugendhat by four and sixteen points respectively in a final two match-up, according to YouGov).
Of course, there is a long way to go before the winner of the Conservative leadership contest is declared on 2nd November — three days after the budget on 30th October and three days before the US presidential election on 5th November. (The timing is still utterly perplexing).
But right now the momentum is with Jenrick, and the race’s prevailing dynamics suggest that won’t change anytime soon.
Lunchtime briefing
James Cleverly admits ‘Stop the boats’ pledge was a mistake and ‘unachievable’
Lunchtime soundbite
‘It bewilders me that anytime she turns up to anything, she doesn’t understand the devastation she’s caused’
— Conservative mayor of Tees Valley Ben Houchen criticises Liz Truss for having a “complete lack of self awareness” after she claimed that the Tories would have performed better in the last election had she been in charge. Via LBC News.
Now try this…
‘“There’s a bit of Liz about Kemi”: Badenoch struggles to throw off maternity gaffe’
The i reports. (Paywall)
‘Cabinet secretary contenders: who could be next top UK civil servant?‘
The Guardian’s Rowena Mason writes that Ofcom chief executive Melanie Dawes and Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins are among those names being considered.
‘A plea to end the Tory regicide’
Nadine Dorries writes for The House.
