Tory party conference is a peculiar affair
There is no sense of forward momentum in Birmingham. The Conservative leadership candidates are failing to think fresh and big.
Every party conference is unique in its own way but this one really is peculiar. There will be no leader’s speech in Birmingham. The nominal leader of the party, Rishi Sunak, headed home on Sunday after a private sign-off to a party members meeting.
There is no message here. No policy to try to sell to the wider public. And no more heroes. In many ways, this is admirably sensible party management. The Tories have just been hammered into their worst general election defeat in centuries. Only two in ten of those eligible to vote put their cross in a Conservative box. It really is a time for the party to “review and rebuild” as the official conference slogan puts it.
The only point of this conference is to be a talking shop for a party that fears, probably mistakenly, that it may be heading for oblivion as its cohort of natural supporters grow older and die.
There is no sense of forward momentum in Birmingham and there will be no catharsis. With Sunak ruling himself out, the conference organisation has been left in the inexperienced hands of the new party Chairman Richard Fuller, who took over in the bombed-out party headquarters on 8 July, and Bob Blackman, the new chair of the 1922, elected around the same time.
They have decided on a drawn-out leadership contest stretching until 2 November. No significant vote or decision affecting that will take place here. Conservative MPs cut down the longlist of would-be leaders earlier this month and they will not draw up the shortlist of two finalists until they get back to Westminster.
This conference could have been an opportunity for real debate – with a morning or an afternoon dedicated to open discussion between the contenders on the way ahead for the party. That might have attracted attention from the general public, instead of the succession of 20 minute stump speeches which are supposed to be the climax in Birmingham on Wednesday.
Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly have been charged £150,000 by the party for the privilege of standing and threatened with “yellow card” discipline if they slag each other off. Their engagement diaries have taken over to make sure they are not present at conference events and receptions at the same time.
The four days of this conference are like the film Groundhog Day. Each morning the candidates get up and stomp around the venue studiously ignoring their rivals. The following day they do it all again. In the relatively cramped spaces of the hall and hotel, they and their well-dressed and self-important entourages pass each other like tankers in the Channel.
Bystanders and professional observers are searching for analogies to describe the surprisingly upbeat mood of the party faithful. “They’ve got over the grieving stage and are heading for the bar”, one journalist suggested. A less cynical PR said it is “like one of those memorial services where the family says we are not going to mourn, we are going to celebrate. Please wear bright orange it was their favourite colour.”
These amusing analogies capture the show that the candidates and the party hierarchy are putting on. They do not reflect what I am hearing from the ordinary delegate who have been turning up for decades from those recently defeated Conservative MPs who still care. They would like a much broader review which is not confined to interviews with GB News and rehashing old commitments to Rwanda deportations and leaving the ECHR.
Lots of mainstream Tories do not think that moving towards Reform UK is the way to beat off the Farage challenge but all the candidates are playing to that agenda at this conference.
Kemi Badenoch launched her campaign under the banner of “Renewal2030” rather than her own name. She argued then that it was pointless to commit to specific policies for government because the Conservatives are going to be out of power for years and circumstances change.
Yet thinking big and fresh is not ultimately where any of the candidates want to go.
The biggest news of this conference so far came out of an interview Badenoch did on Times Radio with Kate McCann and me. We had decided in advance to ask the candidates about values rather than go for “gotcha” questions. So much for that. Kate was not interrupting her or trying to catch her out, as Badenoch claimed subsequently. In the course of a conversation about the family, she stated clearly her view that the burden of maternity pay was “excessive” for some businesses and not a major factor in whether women have “babies”. Her three opponents pounced on the remarks and Badenoch subsequently retracted them.
In the US and in the UK, there is a growing discussion about declining demographics and even the role of women in the workplace and childcare, especially on the right, but it seems the inclination of this conference, and the candidates, is not to address it openly.
Badenoch is certainly the most exciting candidate even if her thoughts are not always fully thought through. In her platform interview on stage, she hardly mentioned her pamphlet attacking big government, “Conservatism in Crisis: the Rise of the Bureaucratic Class”, which she is publishing while in Birmingham.
So where does that leave the contest to be the next leader of the Conservative party?
Badenoch has enjoyed strong support in polls of the membership. But Jenrick seems to be nosing ahead now.
The bookies and conventional wisdom at this conference expect that the final two put forward by Tory MPs will be Jenrick and Badenoch. The Jenrick camp does not fancy a run-off against Badenoch. With the wind behind him, there may be enough careerist votes from Tory MPs to ensure that his opponent in the final round is either Cleverly or Tugendhat.
My guess is that the final choice will be between Jenrick and Cleverly, the senior and most conventional of the surviving candidates.
This unique Conservative party conference is on course to miss its opportunity to renew and rebuild.
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