There are three big winners from this year’s conference. Two of them are leadership contenders. The other has been dead for almost three decades. They are, in turn, Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly, and Keith Joseph, whose example and legacy found itself referenced again, and again, and again.
Jenrick went to Birmingham as the frontrunner. He has been first amongst MPs and the bookies’ favourite. He has the easiest route to the final two. Even if he has not yet displaced Kemi Badenoch in the hearts of members, our ConservativeHome survey suggests he is gaining on her. His job was to arrive, not screw up, and schmooze as many colleagues as possible.
Badenoch had a larger challenge: to prove to MPs that her popularity with the membership was so great that it would be outrageous not to put her name forward to them. This she did not manage. While her speech was an assured run-through of her ‘Renewal 2030’ agenda, to ‘rewire, reboot, and reprogramme’ the post-New Labour order, it was not quite enough to shift the dial.
Specifically, it did not wholly dispel those fears in the minds of colleagues engendered by her comments on maternity pay. Whatever the explanation given by Team Badenoch as to what their chief thought she was saying, rival camps were gifted an opportunity to nudge wavering MPs and suggest this is what every leader’s media round could be like for the next five years.
As with her pride about her Doctor Who Twitter spat, it marked out the aspect of a Badenoch leadership that uncommitted MPs are more concerned about: a rolling argument, where explaining her still-nebulous mission takes a back seat to a constant process of rebuttal and damage control.
Jenrick’s speech, by contrast, was a confident enough recapitulation of his objective – a desire for ‘a new Conservative Party’. It was not the Cameron-esque exercise in eloquence and excitement that more excitable elements of his campaign had promised. Nor did it avoid the charge that he is trying a little too hard to prove his Damascene right-wing conversion is more than skin deep.
By not being a disaster, it ensured that, even if Jenrick has not yet run away with the contest, he is undeniably in pole position. Having also spoken to his wife at our LGBT reception, I know also know he is a big fan of ABBA, Eurovision, and gardening. Which is something, I suppose.
With Jenrick steady and Badenoch wobbling, the question of who will be in the final two remains live. As our Deputy Editor has made clear, James Cleverly or Tom Tugendhat have a route: sweep up Mel Stride’s 16 MPs, knock out the other, and add their support to your own. Even if Jenrick remains ahead in members’ matchups, he should be easier to overhaul than Badenoch.
Has either of them done enough to pip Badenoch? Certainly. Tugendhat’s speech yesterday fell somewhat flat, managing to sound both too sincere and insincere at the same time. Despite flooding the conference centre with merchandise, he has not shifted the impression that his leadership bid stands for little more than his sense of his own importance. Shadow Defence beckons.
Cleverly came the closest to having a transformational conference. Yet he was subterranean for most of the four days. Having given the best performance at our 1922 Reception – a triumph for all invited, involved, and imbibing – he remained absent from the conversation for the next two days, content with the rounds of selfie-taking and chit-chatting the job requires.
Whilst his speech yesterday came across as plodding on television, my esteemed colleague suggests it went down a treat in the hall. In the spirit of Ronald Reagan, Cleverly sought to make members feel good about being Tories again, even whilst exhorting them to seem a little more normal. Optimism, laughter, and a near-total absence of policy: the pep talk the party needed.
Having received a hearty reception, Cleverly should have done enough to edge out Tugendhat on the second ballot, position himself as the candidate of the party’s centre and left (or at least of the ‘not right’), and overhaul Badenoch. By his jokes you shall know him; this race remains remarkably open.
Whomever the next leader, they shall act in the shadow of my third conference victor. For those of us who have been comparing our situation to 1974 more than 1997, it is heartening to know that the tag team of Conservative Revolution from the Centre for Policy Studies and The Rest is History has brought that message to a wider audience. Just in time, you might say.
Even if he got the date of Margaret Thatcher’s victory wrong, Jenrick led the way in referencing that turgid year. An exhausted Conservative government, unsure of its principles, replaced by a shabby Labour administration commanding no discernible enthusiasm – followed, five years later, by a staggering victory, after a recapitulation of what conservatism means.
Badenoch namechecked Joseph, whilst Tugendhat made much of his enthusiasm for his and Thatcher’s ‘Conservative Revolution’. The frustration of #FourteenWastedYears acts as a springboard towards Tory Leninism: the pursuit of a Stepping Stones 2.0, a Conservative revival, national prosperity, and an end to our palpable decline. Please go and read Foundations again.
In mirroring Joseph’s honesty in repudiating much of the governments in which he once served, Jenrick has aimed for his imprimatur, ‘common ground’ and all. But Badenoch also bears obvious similarities: the former frontrunner, she now appears to have cleared the path for an alternative candidate with a kindred agenda, but less of a reputation for making gaffes about mothers.
If Badenoch does fail to make the final two, she should be used like Michael Gove after his third-place finish in 2019. Any of the other candidates should deploy her as Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. She could be tasked with spending the next five years studiously working out a plan for Whitehall reform and how to bring an end to the Blob’s miserable reign.
All of that is still a long way off. It was a surprisingly upbeat conference, my favourite of the three I have attended. It was far from as chaotic as 2022 and as glum as 2023. The scale of the defeat may not have fully settled in. But when, not a hundred days into Labour, the voters have started to hanker for the good old days of Rishi Sunak, it is hard not to feel optimistic.
If we head to Manchester in a year with Keir Starmer fifteen points ahead, with our new leader unpopular or unstable, and with a palpable sense that opposition is a long and futile slog, our sanguinity now will look hubristic. We have a leadership contest to see out. Candidates are chafing against Bob Blackman’s yellow-card system. Hostilities may break out. GB News looms.
And yet the Conservative Party I saw in Birmingham was the most united I have known it in my two and a half years at ConservativeHome. We know why we have lost. We know what is to be done. The work begins immediately. How splendid. The socialists can scheme their schemes, and the liberals can dream their dreams, but we at least have work to do.