“The right always wins” – this was the assessment of a party old hand ahead of the last Tory leadership contest. They were proven correct. Despite the best efforts of One Nation Tories and centrists, Liz Truss was the victor with her promise of a move to more conservative values. It was only when the project failed that MPs were able to skip the membership and put in their favoured candidate.
They won’t be able to do that this time. After the party has suffered its worst ever defeat, the membership wants their say – with many MPs scared of what would happen if they were denied it again. It was already hard enough work for Tory candidates to get activists out campaigning in the election just passed.
It means that as the Conservative Party board prepares to announce the rules of the contest, planning is under way by the hopefuls to plot a route to the final two, one of whom will then be picked by the membership. In 2022, Truss, Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch all battled in the MP rounds to be the candidate of the right. They all knew that whoever ended up in the final two with Sunak had a good chance of winning.
The party membership is to the right of the parliamentary party. The majority voted Leave and about half would support a merger with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. It means for many of the candidates the most important part is the first stage – once they are being judged by the grassroots, they believe the cards are in their favour. This was the case with Boris Johnson when he won in 2019 – his team’s biggest challenge was convincing the parliamentary party to put them through.
So, who is fighting to be the candidate of the right this time around? Badenoch, Braverman, Robert Jenrick and Priti Patel would all be angling for similar MP backers. Then if, as tipped, James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat or Victoria Atkins run, they will be appealing to the centrist left flank of MPs.
It means Tugendhat and Cleverly are both seen as having a decent chance of making the final two – but could then struggle to appeal to the grassroots. “The most right wing candidate in the final two has the best chance,” says a former minister.
So far the contest – which has not seen a single candidate declare – is Badenoch’s to lose, according to the bookmakers. Membership polling has her beating all other eligible candidates should she make the final two. It means there is an incentive for the other candidates to try to stop her.
While Badenoch has supporters on the right, she also has some support from the centre. She arrived in Parliament in 2017, and the small Tory intake from that election are very loyal to one another. If she can keep up the sense that she is the one to beat, she could have a frontrunner advantage where the careerist vote – those MPs who ultimately go to whoever they think is the winning team – moves to her.
What remains in the air is who wins the nominations from the likes of European Research Group member Mark Francois, Common Sense Group chair John Hayes, and the New Conservatives’ Danny Kruger. All of these Tory caucuses – once referenced as part of the “Five Families” of the right – are diminished as a result of the scale of election losses. But they still unlock votes.
At one point, they would have seemed to be Suella Braverman’s for the taking, but these days her one-time allies are less certain following a backlash over various comments she has made, particularly her attack on the flying of the Progress Pride flag on government buildings. “There has been a lot of movement towards Jenrick,” says one Tory figure. “He could be the dark horse in the contest.”
The Jenrick pitch is expected to be along the lines of him being tough on the issues voters care about – like immigration – but with a gentler, more cordial manner than some of his colleagues. Therefore, they will argue, he is the more reliable bet for the right – whereas the alternative is risking a more strident torchbearer who could blow up halfway through and let the left in.
However, Jenrick has amassed critics over the past year. His decision to quit Rishi Sunak’s government over its small boats policy sparked a period of increased turbulence for the former prime minister. It means supporters of Sunak may not look kindly on Jenrick running. “He wasn’t always so hardline,” argues a party figure. “That could come up in the contest.”
It’s why, when you ask an MP who they are most likely to back, the responses are mixed. Badenoch’s name comes up a lot and Jenrick is also cited a fair bit. But there’s one other name that also comes up regularly: Priti Patel.
The former home secretary is seen as being on the right of the party – though the rival camps like to say that she is too much of a face of the past to cut through this time around.
But Patel has something going for her aside from right-wing credentials. Lined up alongside Jenrick and Badenoch, Patel is best placed to argue she is unifier. She gets on with Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. She was also viewed as helpful by Team Sunak. “She’s the candidate a lot of the Tory tribes could live with,” explains an MP.
It means in the fight for the right, the race is not as closed off as some would have you believe. This contest is far from a done deal.