David Gauke is a former Justice Secretary and was an independent candidate in South-West Hertfordshire at the 2019 general election.
Last week’s party conference might just have mattered. When MPs vote later this week to determine who goes forward to the party members in the leadership race, Birmingham will have a bearing.
Of the four candidates who made it to the conference, two had bad weeks, one had a good week and one had a week that was not bad but nor was it good enough.
It would be a major surprise if Tom Tugendhat did not finish fourth out of four when MPs vote on Wednesday. It is a pity. Of all the candidates, he is the most capable of forcing the party to confront its weaknesses, of focusing on the electorate not itself, of resisting a descent into populism. The problem, at least from my perspective, is that he did not demonstrate enough of those qualities in Birmingham. Or, indeed, throughout the whole campaign.
To be fair, running as the perceived centrist candidate is a perilous task. Be the truth-teller, acknowledge the impracticalities of various activist-friendly policies, and you can be seen as a hopeless case in front of the members. Even MPs who agree with you won’t vote for you because they think it futile to put you in the final two. Being seen as a pragmatist might disqualify you from being the pragmatic choice.
Tugendhat has sought to avoid that trap by downplaying his centrist credentials. He has flirted with leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, or at least given that impression (his words on this were more circumspect than they have been interpreted). He has backed an immigration cap. Above all, he has presented himself as the most Tory of archetypes, the old soldier.
By the looks of it, it will not be enough. By embracing right-wing positions on the ECHR and immigration, some have questioned his authenticity. In addition, as his conference speech demonstrated, he lacked an argument. He has all the attributes necessary to be a straight-talking, tough-minded, tell-it-as-it-is leader, capable of challenging his party. One sensed on Wednesday that Tugendhat had half a mind to give such a speech, but concluded that he could not take the risk. As a result, even though he had an otherwise impressive week, his conference speech did not work as he needed it to.
The other speech that did not work on Wednesday was that of Robert Jenrick. This was surprising because he has generally fought an energetic campaign and the content of the speech was exactly what the members might be expected to like. Perhaps that was the problem; it was too obviously pandering. It was the speech that ChatGPT would have written someone wanting to appeal to the Tory Party conference, except ChatGPT would have known that Margaret Thatcher was elected Tory leader in 1975 not 1974.
That was a surprisingly sloppy mistake. More seriously, the line used in one of his videos about special forces “killing rather than capturing terrorists” is a grave error based, it appears, on misunderstanding remarks made previously by Ben Wallace. As with the 1974 error, someone in Jenrick’s team should have spotted it, but Jenrick himself should have been very wary about raising the issue. It raises serious questions about competence and judgement.
My guess is that it is not likely to cost him a place in the final round. His principal rival for votes on the right of the party – Kemi Badenoch – had a better time of it on the final morning, but the conference week as a whole also exposed some of her weaknesses as a politician.
Badenoch can attract attention. She has a worldview. She knows where she wants to go and will not be distracted from that direction. She appears to believe what she says. All of those can be valuable attributes in an aspiring leader. In that capacity, they certainly did not do Liz Truss any harm.
The similarities are too close for comfort. There is the same anti-establishment instinct, determined to take on the blob. There is the same sense of enjoying being outspoken, and a desire to shock. But that also means that there is a lack of a filter. When Badenoch commented that 5 to 10 per cent of civil servants are “in-prison bad”, this was meant as a joke but it created an unnecessary distraction.
Nor, presumably, did she intend to float reducing maternity pay as a policy. There is an ill-discipline about her pronouncements that make her a very high-risk candidate. There was little to reassure Badenoch-sceptics last week.
This leaves James Cleverly, the clear winner of last week. His speech worked because it had a simple message that was delivered with charm and authenticity. His principal point was to tell his party to be more normal. It worked because he is. Cleverly is a genial bloke, comfortable in his skin. He does not easily make enemies or bear grudges; he is a team player. He is outgoing, which means that the party conference is, for him, an absolute blast (perhaps he is not so normal after all). He does not look or sound like a political obsessive.
Implicit in his argument was a strategy to counter Reform. Whereas Jenrick and, to a lesser extent, Badenoch advocate a strategy of occupying Reform’s ground by being more like them, Cleverly will seek to draw a contrast in tone. He does not want to be angry, yearning for a mythical golden past but cheerful and optimistic. The audience responded positively.
This makes him a real contender, with the ConservativeHome survey showing his support among members surging. For those of us keen to ensure that the Conservatives do not become indistinguishable from Reform, it is tempting to rally behind him. There are, however, some caveats.
At a personal level, his likeability is an asset, but he may appeal more to men than women. There can be a fine line between being blokeish and being boorish and he has crossed it in the past. As a leader, he will have to speak more carefully.
Nor is Cleverly’s record political record unblemished. For some of us, there have been three big judgment calls in the last decade which provide a good test. Where did you stand on Brexit, Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss? On all three, Cleverly got it wrong. He even favoured bringing Johnson back after the Truss implosion in the autumn of 2022, which was a ludicrous idea. Personal loyalty to Johnson does not excuse it.
As a minister, however, he showed a willingness to listen to advice that upsets some Conservatives but made him more sceptical of impractical policy proposals. On the ECHR, for example, he shows a greater understanding of the difficulties that would be created by abandoning it than some other candidates.
Resisting foolish ideas is no small matter, but that will not be sufficient. There is a need for an intellectual renewal on the centre right, focused on the economy and public services. Cleverly is not the natural person for such a task but if he is willing to shift the party’s focus onto those topics, others may do the necessary work.
There is no inevitability about the outcome of this race, but when Cleverly claims that he is now the front-runner, that appears to be true. It would not be the worst outcome available.