Tory leadership candidates in key face-off at party conference – UK politics live | Politics
New Conservatives, party of wealth creation, or politics ‘with a smile’ – Tory leadership candidates to set out rival visions
Good morning. There are plenty of more important things in politics than who becomes the next Conservative leader – two thirds of voters don’t even care, according to Ipsos polling, including almost a third of people who backed the party at the election – but if you are interested in the outcome, today is the most important day in the contest so far. Over the past century most people elected Conservative leader have also been prime minister at some point, so it is normally a consequential choice.
Although the four-day conference has, in effect, been a long husting, this morning we’re getting the key face-off. All four candidates are delivering a 20-minute speech in the conference hall. A platform speech to a big audience is always a challenge, but the candidates face two particular difficulties this morning.
First, they are going to have to say something new (no one is impressed by a speech they have heard before) even though they have spent the last three days constanly using their best soundbites, arguments, jokes and talking points. That won’t be easy.
And, second, they have to make a pitch to two separate audiences. Conservative party members will have the final say. But next week the 121 Conservative MPs will vote in two more ballots will eliminate two candidates, before ballot papers with just two names go out to members. And the views and priorities of members and MPs are not wholly aligned; MPs tend to have a more acute sense of what will help them stay elected.
The four candidates have briefed out lines from what they plan to say, and here is snapshot.
Robert Jenrick, who is now the favourite, is going to talk about building a new Conservative party. According to the Telegraph, he will say:
The truth is this. If we’re to tackle the immense challenges we face, if we’re to restore the public’s trust, we must build something new.
A new Conservative party. That is what I call for today. Nothing less than a new Conservative party built on the rock of our oldest values and best traditions. If I become our leader, this is what – together – we will build.
Jenrick’s platform is very rightwing in some respects (he is the only candidate fully committed to withdrawal from the European convention on human rights), but this is the language of Tony Blair, when he created New Labour.
Kemi Badenoch will say the Tories must be the party of “wealth creation”. She will say:
The Conservatives have to be the party of wealth creation. Wealth is not a dirty word. It supports jobs and families. It pays for our schools, for our health service. We should encourage it.
James Cleverly will strike the most optimistic note, the advance briefing suggests. He will say:
Let’s be enthusiastic; relatable; positive; optimistic.
Let’s sell the benefits of a Conservative government with a smile. We will not win back voters by pretending to be something we’re not. We win back voters by being honest, by being professional, by being Conservative.
And Tom Tugendhat will also adopt Blairite language, calling for a “New Conservative Revolution”, according to Politico’s London Playbook (which says the New is capped up in the briefing it had).
There is more on what they will say in our overnight conference story, by Jessica Elgot.
Here is the timetable for the day.
10.30am: Richard Fuller, the Conservative chair, opens the morning session, and there is also a short speech from Stuart Andrew, the chief whip. Then we get into the main event of the conference: the leadership contenders’ beauty parade, where they all deliver 20-minute speeches in the conference hall.
10.45am: Tom Tugendhat speaks.
11.10am: James Cleverly speaks.
11.35am: Robert Jenrick speaks.
Noon: Kemi Badenoch speaks.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line (BTL) or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
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Key events
Back in the hall, Andrew is talking about Labour. Keir Starmer “definitely doesn’t go to Specsavers,” he says.
You would think that the son of a toolmaker would do a better job of putting his own wardrobe together.
Andrew talks about House of Cards, and how in that drama the chief whip ended up as party leader, by eliminating all the candidates. Is it coincidence he is here now? “You may well think that, but I couldn’t possible comment,” he jokes.
He says he is appealling to members for help. The party lost “brilliant” MPs at the election, he says.
But the party is not done, he says.
Stuart Andrew, the chief whip, is speaking now.
He says he will talk about what the party is doing in parliament.
Referring to the “horrific scenes in Israel”, he says the party will work with the government to support Israel, because that is in the national interest.
Richard Fuller, the Tory chair, is on the conference platform now introducing the morning session.
He starts with thanks to various people who have helped with the conference.
Yesterday Robert Jenrick’s team said Jenrick was worried about losing his voice, and they concerns about how well he would be able to project today. This helps to explain a nice joke at the start of this conference upsum by Giles Dilnot, the ConservativeHome editor.
After a frenetic Conference for Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat and Robert Jenrick the tiredness will be kicking in, but also for the teams of advisers who want, and maybe need, their principal to take another go at delivering the twenty-minute speech of their career.
It’s a four hoarse race.
As for who has done best out of the conference so far, Dilnot says there has not (so far?) been a breakthrough moment for anyone.
The problem for the party, and for me, is that none of this gossipy chatter has taken the conference attendees much further forward – nor has any of the four taken conference by storm.
Badenoch dodges questions on how she would block migrants who don’t ‘love’ UK, saying it’s wrong to make policy now
In an article for the Sunday Telegraph published at the weekend, Kemi Badenoch said that people should be committed to the UK, they should “love this country”, if they want to settle here as immigrants. She also implied people who “hate Israel” should be excluded.
On the Today programme this morning Mishal Husain, interviewing Badenoch, tried to get her to explain how a Badenoch government could actually enforce an immigration policy based on these principles. She did not much much luck.
Asked if policy might depend on country of origin (banning or restricting people from certain countries?) or a test on arrival (only admitting people who pass?), Badenoch said it could be “all of those things”. But she repeatedly said she was not proposing policy now, because at this point what mattered were the principles behind her stance. “Of course I don’t have the strategy,” she said.
Badenoch also argued that setting out policy now was counterproductive. In comments that were implicitly critical of her rivals, who have been much happier announcing policy, she said:
The leadership contest is now, and what we are testing is principles and character, not the detail of policy solutions. That will come later.
And the more we start talking about policy before deciding on what we agree on, the more likely we are to start having arguments after the fact. That is what I want to change.
People ask me how we unite the party. It’s by starting with principles, with the mission and direction.
According to Dan Bloom in his London Playbook briefing for Politico, Tories at conference think Kemi Badenoch’s outspoken interventions at the conference have backfired for her. He says:
The conference is awash with talk from some senior Tories that Kemi Badenoch’s blunt comments on maternity pay, minimum wage and the like damaged her standing with MPs, who hold knockout rounds next week. One former minister who backs a rival tells Playbook: “She fucked up on day one.” A senior Tory accuses her of “gaslighting” MPs by blaming the media for over-interpreting her. A backer of another rival adds: “Every time she opens her mouth it gets worse for her … The longer the contest the better it is for everyone else.”
In a conference write-through for Bloomberg, Alex Wickham, Ailbhe Rea and Lucy White says much the same.
Badenoch’s pugnacious style and willingness to get drawn into controversies may have put off some MPs worried about how she’d behave under the glare of leadership, one lawmaker said. Another described her campaign as blowing up over the remarks. A third said Badenoch needed a good week to cement her position among MPs, concluding that hadn’t happened.
The four leadership candidates will not be appearing on the stage together at the conference this morning, it has emerged. Relations between them have been strained; despite the “yellow card” rule supposed to stop personal attacks, most of them have found ways of slyly disparaging their opponents, and there are suggestions they were not all willing to stand alongside each other for a jolly team photograph. But we are expected to see them in the hall together at the end, when members wrap up the conference by singing the national anthem.
Tugendhat criticises Jenrick for including soldier he knew, who’s now dead and can’t defend himself, in controversial video
Aletha Adu
Tom Tugendhat said it is “upsetting” that his Conservative leadership rival Robert Jenrick used footage of a soldier Tugenhdat served with in Afghanistan to claim UK special forces were “killing rather than capturing” terrorists.
Jenrick has been widely-criticised for the campaign video in which he claimed special forces were acting like this through fear of detainees being released under European human rights law.
Tugendhat said one of the soldiers featured in Jenrick’s video died shortly after the video was taken, and is therefore unable to defend himself from such accusations.
Speaking to BBC Newsnight, Tugendhat said:
What’s particularly upsetting is that video is using a piece of footage of some of the people I served with, one of whom there died shortly after that film was taken in an accident, and is not able to defend himself from the accusation that is effectively being levelled against him.
I do not think we should be using footage of our special forces in operations.
I would not put that video out. In fact I’d pull it down.
“So that is actually footage of somebody you knew?”
“Yes.”
Conservative leadership contender Tom Tugendhat reveals he knew one of the Special Forces soldiers who was used in a video released by leadership rival Robert Jenrick.#Newsnight pic.twitter.com/Wy5o6cQnjC
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) October 1, 2024
Cleverly defends calling for abolition of stamp duty on homes
James Cleverly has defended his call for the Tories to commit to abolishing stamp duty on homes
In an interview with the Today programme, when it was put to him that this would cost around £10bn, he replied:
At the last general election, my party – the Conservative party – was being criticised by the Labour party for taxing too much.
If we don’t start cutting taxes, we stifle the economy and we will ultimately not be able to thrive as a country.
When Mishal Husain, the presenter, suggested that this was reminiscent of what Liz Truss was doing in her mini-budget, Cleverly replied:
Your argument is because one of my predecessors proposed it, we can never propose it?
This is why we have now got the highest tax burden since the war. Higher than many of our international competitors and high enough that the Labour party felt liberated to criticise us.
Farage dismisses Tory calls for pact with Reform UK, saying he wants to ‘replace’ Conservatives not collaborate
Some Tories at the conference have been calling for closer links with Reform UK.
In an interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, insisted he was not interested. He said:
There would be no deal with them, I wouldn’t trust them anyway, they have a pattern of behaviour pretending to be one thing and then when they’re in government being quite the opposite.
And, frankly, what I’m trying to do with Reform is replace them.
Farage also said he thought the Tories had no chance of winning the next election.
They all think with a new leader ‘it’ll all be fine, all the voters will come back to us’, and what they don’t understand is the Conservative brand is completely damaged, they have no chance of winning the next election.
Asked if he was proud of having helped to deliver Brexit, Farage said:
Do I think getting back our independence was the right thing to do? You bet your life.
Do I think we’ve handled it well? Good Lord, no.
New Conservatives, party of wealth creation, or politics ‘with a smile’ – Tory leadership candidates to set out rival visions
Good morning. There are plenty of more important things in politics than who becomes the next Conservative leader – two thirds of voters don’t even care, according to Ipsos polling, including almost a third of people who backed the party at the election – but if you are interested in the outcome, today is the most important day in the contest so far. Over the past century most people elected Conservative leader have also been prime minister at some point, so it is normally a consequential choice.
Although the four-day conference has, in effect, been a long husting, this morning we’re getting the key face-off. All four candidates are delivering a 20-minute speech in the conference hall. A platform speech to a big audience is always a challenge, but the candidates face two particular difficulties this morning.
First, they are going to have to say something new (no one is impressed by a speech they have heard before) even though they have spent the last three days constanly using their best soundbites, arguments, jokes and talking points. That won’t be easy.
And, second, they have to make a pitch to two separate audiences. Conservative party members will have the final say. But next week the 121 Conservative MPs will vote in two more ballots will eliminate two candidates, before ballot papers with just two names go out to members. And the views and priorities of members and MPs are not wholly aligned; MPs tend to have a more acute sense of what will help them stay elected.
The four candidates have briefed out lines from what they plan to say, and here is snapshot.
Robert Jenrick, who is now the favourite, is going to talk about building a new Conservative party. According to the Telegraph, he will say:
The truth is this. If we’re to tackle the immense challenges we face, if we’re to restore the public’s trust, we must build something new.
A new Conservative party. That is what I call for today. Nothing less than a new Conservative party built on the rock of our oldest values and best traditions. If I become our leader, this is what – together – we will build.
Jenrick’s platform is very rightwing in some respects (he is the only candidate fully committed to withdrawal from the European convention on human rights), but this is the language of Tony Blair, when he created New Labour.
Kemi Badenoch will say the Tories must be the party of “wealth creation”. She will say:
The Conservatives have to be the party of wealth creation. Wealth is not a dirty word. It supports jobs and families. It pays for our schools, for our health service. We should encourage it.
James Cleverly will strike the most optimistic note, the advance briefing suggests. He will say:
Let’s be enthusiastic; relatable; positive; optimistic.
Let’s sell the benefits of a Conservative government with a smile. We will not win back voters by pretending to be something we’re not. We win back voters by being honest, by being professional, by being Conservative.
And Tom Tugendhat will also adopt Blairite language, calling for a “New Conservative Revolution”, according to Politico’s London Playbook (which says the New is capped up in the briefing it had).
There is more on what they will say in our overnight conference story, by Jessica Elgot.
Here is the timetable for the day.
10.30am: Richard Fuller, the Conservative chair, opens the morning session, and there is also a short speech from Stuart Andrew, the chief whip. Then we get into the main event of the conference: the leadership contenders’ beauty parade, where they all deliver 20-minute speeches in the conference hall.
10.45am: Tom Tugendhat speaks.
11.10am: James Cleverly speaks.
11.35am: Robert Jenrick speaks.
Noon: Kemi Badenoch speaks.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line (BTL) or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. I’m still using X and I’ll see something addressed to @AndrewSparrow very quickly. I’m also trying Bluesky (@andrewsparrowgdn) and Threads (@andrewsparrowtheguardian).
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos (no error is too small to correct). And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
