Toby Berry is a Young Conservative and student in South London.
With the Tory leadership race hotting up, and the contenders due to be whittled down to four in just a month, it is important to test the battlefield on which they will fight.
Much has been made, as could be expected, of the divisions between the contenders – whether they are a darling of the right or a champion of the centre – and whether they can unite the two factions. Accepting that unity is indeed a crucial point, we may leave that aside and have the contenders prove their value.
What we must look more closely at, however, is the ideological weighting.
There seems to be a dominant view in the membership of the Party that Reform UK must be dealt with first, unifying the right – a clear appeal to the adage that a house divided cannot stand. Many of us know people, each with good intentions, who say that we must defend the centre to avoid the vitriol associated with the right. The two are by no means mutually exclusive, although common attitudes seem to hold them thus.
The remedy for our woes is found neither in the abandonment of the right nor in mirroring the grandstanding of Reform UK but in an undertaking of fundamental conservative values and establishment of a composed image.
The debate in the Party over the fundamental values of conservatism will steam ahead, each contender will decide their exact interpretation – we should take some comfort in the idea that all six agree on the basics, will debate about more nuanced values, and are willing to work with people who do not share the rest.
The aforementioned fundamental values assured in the principle of competition, an opposition leader must also fight them; a willingness to put their head above the parapet and a boldness to attack head-on the failures and flaws of Labour (alongside the Liberal Democrats, Reform UK, and others).
Although many will think that this is a rather obvious thing to say, I do feel it is a necessary basis for what I say next – they must not be hostile. We need a fighter, not a butcher. Many in the Party worry that Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch, and Priti Patel will have a fight in them, but rather too much of a fight- people not very far off from these three on the political spectrum find themselves running headlong away from them for fear that they will be vitriolic.
Conversely, many who stand more with Jenrick, Badenoch, and Patel worry that Tom Tugendhat, Mel Stride, and James Cleverly will be milquetoast (perhaps Sunak-esque) and will not be able to make a stand against Labour – aside from concerns that they will not serve to dampen the fire on the right of our Party and in Reform.
What can we deduce from these fears? It doesn’t seem too great a stretch to say that people just want a normal leader, someone who fights for their conservative principles and does so with gusto. What they do not want, however, is somebody who marches under the banner of the right of the Party while ranting and raving. Boldness certainly, rabidity certainly not.
Many people I’ve spoken to, Conservative or otherwise, have said that some of the candidates in this leadership race make them uneasy. We need to listen to their concerns. We must ignore the snuck premise that this race is between centre-right policy or right policy. Both can win elections and both are broadly acceptable.
We need to understand, once and for all, that centre-right politicians can win so long as they prove they are willing to fight for Britain, and right-wing politicians can win so long as they prove that their fight will not descend into vitriol.
The task at hand for each candidate, therefore, has multiple faces. Firstly they must prove that they can unify the two wings, secondly they must make the case that their policy is best. But perhaps most importantly they must make it clear that they are fighters and not butchers, bold and not rabid.
