Whatever next in the Conservative Party leadership contest?

The next stage of the contest will could see the Conservative party move further away from the things that matter most to the public

And so we move into members voting stage of the 2024 Conservative leadership contest. Yesterday’s rather shock result saw the frontrunner from the previous (third) round of MPs’ voting, James Cleverly, eliminated at the final parliamentary hurdle. The figures for that final ballot are below, showing Cleverly not only dropping out yesterday, but doing so having lost votes overnight between the 8th and 9th October.

For the front runner to fall backwards and drop into third place in the space of 24 hours, you suspect perhaps more than one parliamentary game has been afoot in the recent rounds of voting.

If you’ll allow me for a moment to indulge in the exchange of gossip and speculation (not my normal Plain Speaking English service, I’ll admit), the three theories I have heard most in various exchanges (both public and private) have been that either one or some combination of the following happened:

• The Cleverly campaign did not canvass strongly enough overnight on October 8th, complacency having set in, and ‘soft Cleverly’ votes (including those coming over from previously backing Tugendhat) were peeled off by the Jenrick and Badenoch campaigns who were hitting the phones hard to try win new supporters.

• Cleverly-aligned votes were lent to other candidates (one, in particular, with reference to the head-to-head matchup data in recent Conservative party membership polling) on October 9th to try and maximise his chances of winning the membership ballot. This may have happened without any central Cleverly campaign sanction or even knowledge.

• Cleverly was himself ‘lent’ votes in the October 8th ballot by other candidates who wanted he and not Tom Tugendhat move into the final round of MPs voting.

Personally, I find the former two more plausible than the third - I’m not sure what the rest of the field gained by Cleverly, rather than Tugendhat, making it through to the final three. But, as I say, this is all gossip and speculation.

At any rate, with Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick now moving into the final two, the Conservative party membership will be listening to a rather narrower ideological debate than they have been used to since being gifted the final say on their leader as part of William Hague’s reforms.

In terms of how that vote might go, the latest YouGov Conservative party membership polling suggests a dead heat between the two now finalists. Our figures on the eve of the party’s Birmingham conference had Badenoch on 52% and Jenrick on 48% (with uncertain and non-voters removed). It’s anyone’s game.

Both candidates were identifiably on the right of the original of field of six candidates from the get-go. Kemi Badenoch has is a well known and long (in the context of the speed at which British politics now moves) champion of the Conservatives’ right flank, and is more recently joined in that regard by the previously Remainer, described-moderate, Robert Jenrick who these days talks very tough on issues such as immigration, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and ‘prudent’ public spending.

Not many expected that an opening slate of candidates featuring broadly equal parts right and centre of the Conservative party would produce probably the two furthest right as the final options for members to pick between.

Typically, the more centrist ‘one nation’ group (and their offshoots and allies) are able to organise behind and put through a candidate from their part of the party into the final two.

This time, that did not happen.

And that will have consequences for the type of debate that we are likely to see from this, the final round - and the direction it will likely go in.

It is well known that Conservative party members sit further to the political right than even the party’s own MPs, and further still to the right of the average British voter (h/t, Professor Tim Bale).

The two candidates put forward to the membership align fairly well in that regard with the party faithful, but could perhaps struggle to differentiate themselves in the debates and pitches to come and could find the position they eventually win from to be well away from the median voter.

The natural instinct for the candidates may well be to push further to the right to try and establish points of difference from their rival, maximising membership appeal while simultaneously creating separation from their opponent.

While this could be a good strategy in the immediate battle to come, it could create a tricky situation for the winner when they then have to pivot back toward the general public.

A leader for instance who won the membership vote while committing to leave the ECHR will find themselves immediately at odds with the average voter, who believes that the UK country should stay in.

Equally, an emerging winner standing on a platform of cutting taxes over increasing funding for public services would also be on the wrong side of public opinion as it stands.

As well, while immigration is by far the number one concern among Conservative party members, it is tied in second place with health and behind the economy in the eyes of the British public.

The last election was not an immigration election, and while that might be the question that the Conservatives would like 2029 to be about, there’s little now five years out that should lead us to conclude it will be.

And any revival of the Rwanda plan, or something similar, is likely to be received lukewarmly, at best, by Brits.

While all this won’t be of much concern to Jenrick and Badenoch in the nearest future as they seek to win an election among one of the most right-leaning electorates in British politics, putting together a winning voter coalition for the next general election by talking about and campaigning on the sorts of issues and positions, and in the sorts of ways, which curry favour with Conservative party members will be difficult, to say the least.

Worse still, if coverage of the final stage of race becomes dominated by policy issues and leads to the winning candidate being framed (or understood) in terms of ideas, approaches, and positions which sound alien to the preferences and priorities of the average voter, this could be a very difficult opening position in the court of public opinion for the new leader of the opposition to recover from.

All of which could also distract the new leader of the Conservative party from actually dealing with the fundamental, underlying issues as to why the party lost so heavily on July 4th. Issues which, by the way, I did not detect a lot of serious engagement with during their conference in Birmingham this month; trust, competence, sound economic management, engagement with and consideration for the life and experience of the average Brit, and working in the best interests of the country rather than endlessly talking to themselves.

There is though a common loop through which this tricky thread may pass. We at YouGov used our AI Topic Quantifier - an AI-powered open-text response coder - to summarise what, in their own words, Conservative party members told us they were most looking for in their new leader.

While 15% said something about the new leader needing to have ‘conservative values’ almost a quarter (22%) said mentioned that they were looking for a leader with ‘integrity and honesty’. Two themes which strike chords with many of the reasons why the British voting public abandoned the Conservatives to such an extent between 2019 and 2024.

Perhaps there is a walkable, winning path for either Jernick or Badenoch which does not engage so much with rightward policy drifts, and instead addresses these crucial characteristics required for the Conservatives to win bak the trust of the British public.