You can say one thing for this Conservative leadership contest: it isn’t boring. As expected, Tom Tugendhat is out of the race following this afternoon’s (8 October) vote from Tory MPs. But, in a dramatic reversal of the last voting round in which he and Tugendhat were tied at the bottom, James Cleverly has rocketed ahead.
With 39 votes, Cleverly is now the clear frontrunner in terms of MP choices, with Robert Jenrick on 31 and Kemi Badenoch on 30. Cleverly has a couple of things to thank for this sudden advancement. Yesterday’s endorsement from Mel Stride, who fell in the last voting round just before parliament rose for recess, has clearly bolstered him. But Stride only got 16 votes back then. Today’s result suggests that every single of those MPs has switched en masse to Cleverly, along with Stride himself – and that someone who previously backed Jenrick has changed their mind. Evidence of vote-swapping shenanigans or simply Tory MPs shifting to back a (supposed) winner? We will never know.
What we do know is that the Conservative Party Conference has proved pivotal for Cleverly. He has gone from a disappointing start (he didn’t win a single extra vote between the first and second rounds) to being almost certain to make the final two. MPs and party members I spoke to in Birmingham were impressed with him for a number of reasons. His refusal to get drawn into backbiting and to avoid criticising his rivals was cited as a major plus point. So was his easy, gaffe-free performance with the media – especially while Badenoch was out taking shots at maternity pay and suggesting thousands of civil servants should be in prison, while Jenrick was accusing UK special forces of killing rather than capturing terror suspects.
I went to several Cleverly events, and you could sense in the room that his answers were resonating better than the others’. His speech on Wednesday got by far the most enthusiastic response. A poll of party members conducted by ConservativeHome similarly found that he was the only candidate deemed more worthy of support after conference than before, while 42 per cent thought he had delivered the best speech – almost double that of runner-up Badenoch.
The question ahead of tomorrow’s vote is who will emerge as the candidate of the right. With Badenoch and Jenrick virtually neck-and-neck, the next 24 hours will be vicious. There was a sense at conference that Badenoch hadn’t done enough to break through given the relentlessness of Jenrick’s campaign, but the ConHome survey suggests members find her more impressive. Right-wing Conservative MPs, meanwhile, will be mulling over who is best-placed to be their standard bearer. Badenoch is considered a bit of a wild card, capable of making her own weather. But she is also a risk, just as likely to blow up with controversial comments that then dominate the news cycle and lead her to claim she’s being misquoted.
Does she have a better chance of beating Cleverly with the members than Jenrick, who is more consistent but also less exciting (and, his critics argue, veering too close to Nigel Farage territory)? Or does it not matter which one they pick, given Conservative party members traditionally back whichever candidate is considered more right-wing? Either way, the momentum is now very much behind Cleverly, who is likely to pick up the majority of Tugendhat’s backers in the next round. Who said the Toryland drama was over?
[See also: Sue Gray and the dysfunction of Downing Street]
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