Britain’s Conservative Party suffered the worst election defeat of its modern history less than three months ago. Yet one would be hard-pressed to find much evidence of it at the party’s annual conference in Birmingham, where the drinks flowed, conversation crackled and the mood could be only described as light.
Unburdened by government, energized by a lively leadership contest, and gleeful at the bumpy debut of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government, the Conservatives gathered to plot their future, with some members expressing relief rather than frustration at being thrust into the opposition.
“I was expecting something a little more gloomy, seeing as we had been defeated,” said James Paterson, a party member from Hinckley, in the East Midlands. Instead, he said: “It’s really positive, it’s buzzing. The way the Labour Party have made such a mess of their first few months is making it easier.”
The upbeat atmosphere was a stark contrast to Labour’s conference last week, which was clouded by anxiety over news media reports about freebies accepted by Starmer and other senior Labour politicians, as well as the general weight of running the country after being out of government for 14 years.
Now taking their turn in opposition, the Conservatives are focusing on electing a new leader. The four remaining candidates — Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugendhat — ran a beauty-contest-style gantlet, giving interviews, grinning for selfies, lobbying lawmakers and even hawking branded merchandise from their own booths.
Tugendhat took an early lead in the swag arms race, offering lollipops with his face on them, temporary tattoos and fake tanning spray, “Tugend-tan” (stocks quickly ran out). At Cleverly’s booth, visitors could spin a wheel of fortune to see what merchandise they would win: Prizes included Taylor Swift-style friendship beads and leakproof water bottles.
Badenoch, a combative former Cabinet minister who is popular with the party’s right, stuck to more standard fare, such as buttons and lanyards. Another darling of the right, Robert Jenrick, peddled blue-and-white baseball caps emblazoned with the slogan, “We want Bobby J.”
Each candidate submitted to questioning by a journalist from the right-wing news channel GB News, which gave a glimpse into the kinds of issues that motivate Tory Party members, if not the country at large. They all pledged to reduce immigration, and three of them said they would consider pulling out of the European Convention on Human Rights, a treaty Britain signed 73 years ago if it raised hurdles to Britain’s efforts to tighten its borders.
Still, none of the contenders appeared to offer a convincing answer to the existential question confronting the Tories. How can they win back votes they lost on their right flank to Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-immigration party, Reform U.K., without alienating the voters who switched to the centrist Liberal Democrats, who won 72 seats, mainly in areas traditionally dominated by the Conservatives?
Tony Travers, a professor of politics at the London School of Economics, said there was a sense of “nothing left to lose” at the meeting, but that it showed a party “totally failing to think about the failures that lost the office.”
Tory members of Parliament will vote next week to winnow the field to two finalists, and a winner will be chosen by members on Nov. 2.
Given that the party’s estimated 170,000 members tend to be older, less ethnically diverse, and richer than the general population, the candidates’ pitches tilted to the right — sometimes jarringly so.
In a promotional video, Jenrick claimed, without evidence, that British special forces troops “are killing rather than capturing terrorists” because a European human rights court would otherwise force the government to release them. He came under sharp criticism from Tugendhat and Cleverly, both former soldiers.
Badenoch got into hot water after declaring in an interview that Britain’s maternity leave payments were “excessive” and that people needed to exercise “more personal responsibility.” She spent much of Monday claiming she had been misrepresented, citing Margaret Thatcher as a fellow victim of the media, and later posted on social media, “of course I believe in maternity pay!”
In its unpredictability, the contest has revived memories of 2005, when, after yet another election defeat to Tony Blair, the Conservatives seemed on course to pick a former minister, David Davis, as leader. However, a youthful David Cameron spoke without notes to party activists, impressing them with his energy and seizing the initiative in the race, which he went on to win.
This time, according to Robert Hayward, a Conservative member of the House of Lords and an opinion polling expert, the contest is “wide open.”
“Party members seem unsure what they want, and there is no stellar candidate in the way that David Cameron was in 2005,” he said.
Conservative lawmakers have a reputation for skulduggery in leadership contests, and the meeting hummed with suggestions that some of the candidates may have lent their supporters’ votes to one contender in earlier rounds to try to disadvantage another they consider more of a threat.
Hayward said the number of centrist lawmakers was probably not large enough for both Cleverly and Tugendhat, the two more middle-of-the-road candidates, to make it to the final round.
Jenrick, who has emerged as perhaps the front-runner, mixes a mild manner with hard-line positions. He has argued, for example, that the police should immediately arrest pro-Palestinian demonstrators who shout “Allahu akbar,” an Arabic phrase meaning “God is great.”
Moni Kaur Nanda, who ran in the general election but lost to a Labour candidate in the district of Slough, west of London, said she wanted “anybody but Jenrick.” As someone of Indian heritage, she said: “I don’t like the language he is projecting. I don’t think it’s helpful in this country.”
Jenrick did strike a more diplomatic tone on another issue: After declaring previously that he hoped Donald Trump would win the U.S. presidential election, the Tory candidate now demurs from an explicit endorsement, saying he would work well with Vice President Kamala Harris if she were the winner.
Andrew Williams, a party member and Conservative councilor in Dacorum, Hertfordshire, was won over by Cleverly’s performance on Tuesday. “If he makes the final two, he will be my choice,” Williams said. “I felt he was more genuine and can deliver on taking the party forward with unity.”
Referring to the scandal-scarred but still popular former prime minister, Boris Johnson, Williams added, “We don’t have another Boris on offer, but we need someone who can unite the party and appeal to the electorate.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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