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LONDON — Britain’s once-mighty Conservatives are on life support — but these four hopefuls think they have a way back.
After an election that saw their representation in the House of Commons drop by two-thirds, Britain’s Tory MPs have whittled down their potential future leadership hopefuls to four.
The lineup will now be further trimmed by MPs, until the final two contenders go to a vote of rank-and-file Tory members in mid-October. The new leader will be announced on Nov. 2, three days before the U.S. presidential election — so they can expect about 15 seconds of media coverage before being eclipsed by events across the Atlantic.
Whoever wins gets the joy of what has been dubbed the worst job in politics: leader of the opposition, responsible for holding a Labour government with a thumping majority to account. They face years of trying to rally the troops for a win — with no guarantee of an election victory on the other side.
Will the party opt to tack further to the right and take on Nigel Farage’s surging Reform UK, or try to shift to the middle after Labour’s election triumph? And will a British public that just gave the Tories an almighty kicking even care? Here’s POLITICO’s guide to what each candidate is selling.
Kemi Badenoch: The radical
A frontrunner among the Tory party membership, Kemi Badenoch isn’t afraid to cause a bit of trouble.
Long before she entered parliament in 2017, Badenoch guessed the password to a website belonging to Labour bigwig Harriet Harman — and tweaked it to say nice things about the Tories. She later described the incident as a “foolish prank,” but it set the tone for a combative spell.
Never shy of a fight, the shadow housing secretary — who has done a host of Cabinet jobs — has framed her campaign around renewal and telling hard truths.
She argues she’ll offer optimism in the face of doom and gloom from Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer. She’s an avid proponent of free markets, free speech and wading into what’s sometimes characterized as the “culture wars.”
Oh, and Badenoch is also in an ongoing fight with … “Doctor Who” actor David Tennant, who used a speech at an LGBT awards ceremony to tell her to “shut up.” Badenoch turned the tables, using a campaign video to declare that she’s “not afraid of Doctor Who” or the “cultural establishment” in Britain for that matter. Badenoch’s abrasive style could make uniting the Tories rather tricky.
James Cleverly: Mr Unity
James Cleverly has built his campaign around uniting different wings of the Conservative Party, and warned them not to try to win the next election by doing a “passable impression” of Nigel Farage. The Tories, he said, “need to make fewer promises, but deliver on every single promise we make.”
He has served in two of the four great offices of state as home secretary and foreign secretary. A party loyalist, he stayed continuously in government from 2018 while the Tories cycled through leaders.
Cleverly’s a smooth media operator, but he can be rather gaffe prone. He reportedly described then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s flagship Rwanda deportation scheme (which he’s promised to revive) as “batsh*t.” He became embroiled in a row with an MP over whether or not he called the northern England town of Stockton-on-Tees a “sh*thole.” And he made an off-color joke about spiking drinks after announcing a law to clampdown on the crime.
Cleverly’s friendship with Boris Johnson, who was ousted by his own party in 2022, will play well with Tory members. The duo worked together closely when Johnson was mayor of London. Cleverly endorsed Johnson’s ill-fated bid to return No. 10 after Liz Truss’ abrupt resignation in Oct. 2022.
Robert Jenrick: The shapeshifter
Once dubbed “Robert Generic” for seeming to represent a pretty flavorless brand of centrist Toryism, the 42-year-old, first elected in 2014, has tacked to the right on immigration and emerged as a strong contender this time around.
Jenrick voted to stay in the EU in the 2016 Brexit referendum. But he came to prominence when he co-authored (with Rishi Sunak, no less) a Times op-ed endorsing Brexiteer Boris Johnson for leader.
Dropped from Johnson’s Cabinet team in 2021, not long after becoming embroiled in a controversy over a planning decision involving a Conservative donor, Jenrick made a government comeback as immigration minister under Sunak, but quit last year in protest at the government’s repeated failure to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.
The signs he was mulling a leadership bid were all there — ably assisted by Ozempic, he shed the pounds and got a snazzy new haircut. And he wooed influential right-wing MPs including Danny Kruger and John Hayes, who previously backed Jenrick’s old boss and failed leadership hopeful Suella Braverman.
Policy wise, Jenrick has pledged to leave the European Convention on Human Rights on day one if he wins the election and to cap immigration. Those will be popular ideas among Tory members, even if the practical details are … quite a bit harder to iron out. Jenrick also says he wants to do more on house building — and he’s racking up big donations.
Tom Tugendhat: The Cameron
Tom Tugendhat is the One Nation candidate in the contest, trying to tap into the same modernizing, centrist instincts as former Prime Minister David Cameron. That’s a tough sell to a Tory membership that picked Boris Johnson and then chaos merchant Liz Truss the last few time it was given a vote. He’s even channeled Labour’s Keir Starmer at points by pledging to return politics to the values of public service after years of internal party squabbling.
Elected in 2015, Tugendhat had served a long military career in Iraq and Afghanistan before entering politics. The shadow security minister is never happier than when pontificating on world affairs — and has even been sanctioned by China for strongly criticizing Beijing.
Aware the Tory membership is more right-wing than the British electorate, Tugendhat initially wrote about being prepared to leave the ECHR but later spoke about reforming the convention instead. He also supports capping immigration, a position advocated but never met in the Cameron years. Tugendhat has warned that Brits will “never vote for a party that they’ve stopped taking seriously,” and even apologized for the last government’s failings.
He’s had some … fun moments. Sharp-eyed online observers spotted that his campaign’s opening pitch spelled out “Turd” when read in a certain way. And he once sparked a Twitter storm by responding to his four-year-old daughter getting a Valentine’s day card by posting … an image of himself in full military gear with a gun. As you do.
