It’s good to talk: UK Tories reflect on election loss and the future
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Delegates attending the second day of the UK Conservatives’ annual gathering in Birmingham on Sept 30.
PHOTO: AFP
BIRMINGHAM – At the British Conservatives’ first annual gathering out of power in 15 years, activists put on a brave face as the party adjusts to life in opposition and grapples over its future.
“It feels to me like a mass therapy session,” party member Peter Young, 60, told AFP of the four-day gathering in Birmingham, central England.
“We’re all getting together and saying, ‘Mea culpa’. It’s not uplifting,” he said, reflecting on the Tories’ historic defeat to Labour in July’s general election.
The Conservatives were dumped out of power after 14 years
The conference is the Tories’ first in opposition since 2009 – and it shows.
Crowds feel on the low side and gone are the masses of lobbyists and corporations who now have more to gain from attending Labour’s version.
“This time, it’s members talking to each other, networking, getting to know each other, supporting each other, discussing policy, discussing ideas, the future of the party,” said Tory member Laura Weldon, 39.
“And that’s really important and really nice. It’s not depressing at all. It’s actually quite a good laugh.”
Reform UK threat
Injecting life into the event, which ends on Oct 2, is a four-way battle over who will succeed former prime minister Rishi Sunak as party leader.
Front runner Robert Jenrick, Ms Kemi Badenoch, Mr James Cleverly and Mr Tom Tugendhat are all addressing delegates.
“Obviously, there’s a lot of disappointment that we didn’t win the general election,” said 21-year-old Conservative activist Dillon Hughes, clutching a pro-Badenoch poster.
“But I think with the leadership contest... it’s absolutely vital that we do get a leader that is going to be strong and very confident to move the party forward in a new direction.”
The party faces a dilemma: should it focus on winning back voters who defected to Mr Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform UK party or aim to regain the support of those who switched to the centrist Liberal Democrats?
“I think Reform is a threat,” said Mr Young, adding that the Conservatives “need to be stronger about what they intend to do about some of the main issues that Reform have had the courage to identify”.
Mr Cleverly, a former home secretary and foreign secretary, has the support of Ms Shelagh Lee, a 65-year-old activist from Hampshire in southern England.
She believes he is best placed to bring together a party that has delivered five party leaders and prime ministers since 2016, including three in little over three months in 2022.
“It’s obvious that he is a unifier,” said Ms Lee, praising Mr Cleverly’s ministerial experience.
Mr James Cleverly and his wife Susannah posing for photos with supporters at the Conservative Party Conference on Sept 30.
PHOTO: AFP
Conservative MPs will vote next week to determine the final two candidates. Party members will then select the winner in a ballot that closes at the end of October.
Britain’s new opposition leader – and the person tasked with reuniting the notoriously fractious party and making it electable again – will be announced on Nov 2.
Right... but not too much
The party as a whole has drifted rightwards in the years since the 2016 Brexit vote, but Ms Badenoch and Mr Jenrick are seen as the more right wing of the candidates, with Mr Cleverly and Mr Tugendhat nearer the centre.
“I think you’d be hard-pressed to suggest that any of the candidates are suggesting a return to the centre ground, except as they define it, which curiously enough seems to be pretty right wing,” said Professor Tim Bale.
“It’s more a battle for which variety of Thatcherite economics and populist culture war is going to get the nod from members,” added the politics professor at Queen Mary University of London.
Ms Kemi Badenoch speaking at the Conservative Party Conference on Sept 30.
PHOTO: AFP
While seen as Mr Jenrick’s closest challenger, Ms Badenoch has however endured a disastrous start to conference week when she had to row back from comments appearing to criticise maternity pay as “excessive”.
“Every Conservative leadership candidate has to basically achieve a kind of two-step move,” said politics professor Robert Ford of the University of Manchester.
“They need to be as right wing as possible in order to prevail with the membership, but not so right wing that they become unacceptable to their fellow MPs.
“The question becomes: which of these do we think are actual true believers, and which of them are being strategic and are actually more flexible and willing to adjust course once they actually secure office?” AFP
