Paul Athans is an ex-regular and serving reservist in the British Army. He was the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Hazel Grove in the 2024 General Election.
“It doesn’t matter who’s in the final two because the membership will just vote for whoever’s the most ‘right-wing’”. This is a statement that I’ve heard more than once. I’m sure many people reading this will agree with the sentiment. On the face of it, the past supports this.
We’ve had four leadership elections where members have had a vote. Iain Duncan Smith v Kenneth Clarke in 2001, David Cameron v David Davis in 2005, Boris Johnson v Jeremy Hunt in 2019, and Liz Truss v Rishi Sunak in 2022. In three of these elections, the candidate seen as ‘on the right’ won.
However, as any student of statistics knows, a sample size of four is not enough to confirm a trend. Equally, how someone ‘did’ act in the past is not necessarily a good indicator of how they ‘will’ act in the future.
Reducing the leadership elections down to a binary ‘left v right’ choice misses the plethora of other factors at play in each election. The popularity of the candidates, their performance in the campaign, the state of the party at the time, who the parliamentary party backed, and so on.
The first of these leadership elections took place at a time when William Hague’s reward, for four years of opposition, was gaining one extra MP. The members were given a choice of a very pro-EU candidate in Clarke and a much more Euro-sceptical Duncan Smith. The latter won with 61 per cent to 39 per cent.
Next came David Cameron v David Davis in 2005, the election that bucked the trend. Cameron was the more centrist candidate but he won with the largest share of the members’ vote in all four elections (68 per cent -32 per cent).
In the 2019 contest, ‘Brexit’ was the dominant issue. The final two were widely seen by the membership as Leave vs Remain so it was not really a surprise when Johnson romped home by 66 per cent to 34 per cent for Hunt).
Fast forward to 2022 and the political situation has changed dramatically. Based on how the two candidates campaigned in the 2016 referendum, it should have been an easy win for Sunak. But this leadership election wasn’t about Brexit and the membership didn’t vote down those lines. Instead, this much closer election (57 per cent Truss, 43 per cent Sunak) had an array of underlying issues that shaped the result. I’ll highlight three.
Sunak ran his campaign like he was making a General Election pitch to the country, whilst Truss was much more focused in her messaging. I was still serving in the Regular Army in 2022 so kept my political affiliations close to my chest but as a party member could vote.
Due to an inexplicable series of events, I found myself attending the Conservative Women’s Organisation Hustings on Zoom (it’s possible that I was the only male on the call). Sunak went first and gave an excellent pitch on the national picture. Truss came on and talked about her plans to get more women into politics. The phrase ‘know your audience’ springs to mind.
Then there’s the Johnson effect. The impact of his downfall loomed over this leadership election. Many members either still supported him or felt that MPs ousting him was an affront to the membership.
This, arguably, was the single biggest issue for members when casting their vote. Sunak helped to bring down Johnson, but Truss didn’t. You could easily reframe this election as pro-Johnson vs anti-Johnson even though neither candidate was offering truly Johnsonian policies.
Finally, there was a perception among many members that they were being forced to choose between two candidates when in reality they wanted neither. This could in part be down to the very public MP phase which even included a televised debate between the candidates. This can only be described as an act of self-harm, as the British public got to watch colleagues tearing chunks out of each other.
This also gave a very visible platform to candidates who would not make it to the final two, most notably Penny Mourdant. Some members picked their preferred candidate early only to be disappointed when they could not vote for them. A rumour even went around the membership that Sunak’s team had whipped some of their MPs to vote for Truss over Mordaunt as Truss was patently the weaker candidate. Perhaps those who believed this accusation voted for Truss as a protest?
So what can we learn from the past and what could it mean for the future? In three of the four elections the candidate seen as more ‘right-wing’ won. However, you can only really attribute a left v right contest to the 2001 election.
In 2005, the more centrist candidate (Cameron) won because he was eminently more electable and had shone at the conference. In 2019, Johnson won as the Brexit candidate and the only one who could break the deadlock. In 2022, the situation was far more nuanced. It wasn’t a ‘centrist’ vs ‘right-wing’ choice. It was a pro-Johnson, highly targeted, and anti-status quo candidate vs the anti-Johnson, more general pitch, and ‘establishment’ candidate.
Simply assuming the next leader of the Conservative Party will be whoever in the final two is the more ‘right-wing’, is an insult to our membership. They are a much more intelligent and prescient voting base than most commentators give them credit for. If I’m right, then I offer the following unsolicited advice to our six candidates on how they could win over the membership:
- Don’t spend the entire campaign slagging off your opponents. They’re colleagues, not the Labour Party. Uniting the party is the number one task of the new leader and that challenge has already started. Set out a positive pitch and resist the urge to attack. It will do you, and the party no favours.
- Rebuild trust. There have been numerous articles written analysing ‘why’ we lost the election but I can simplify it to one word ‘trust’. We lost the trust of the public, and the membership knows this better than anyone. Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose so the candidate who can make the best pitch in this one area will be well placed.
- Present a plan for CCHQ and associations. It wasn’t just the parliamentary party that took a beating at this election. The loss of their MP could be fatal to many associations unless we act now to galvanise our volunteer base and bounce back in force. Candidates must offer a plan for how CCHQ and the voluntary party will operate in the future.
- Look electable. This contest has more in common with 2005 than 2019 or 2022. We’re electing a Leader of the Opposition (who we hope will become PM), not a Prime Minister. We can’t rely on someone who can win the electorate round by simply being competent. We need someone who can combine competence and charisma. The conference will be the key moment to display this.
Whoever can achieve these four things will have the best chance at winning regardless of their ‘wing’. I hope that together, we can find the best candidate to lead us into the next election and win.
