| The most important thing about the process announced by the Conservatives earlier this week is that it’s pretty long, with results announced on 2 November. (In publicity terms, the decision to present a new leaderthree days before the US election looks like a strange one.) “That probably helps the candidates who are less well known, and will have a chance to make themselves known,” Freedman said. “I think the main person it harms is Kemi Badenoch.” That’s partly because of her reputation as an abrasive figure – she will need the discipline to avoid confirming it for longer – and partly because, as the current frontrunner, the sooner the contest ends the better. Candidates need ten MPs’ nominations to get on the ballot. The contest will be narrowed down by MPs to four candidates before party conference, where those four will get a chance to address the membership. Then MPs reduce the number to two before a final membership vote. By making sure MPs still have a say after conference, the 1922 committee – which sets the rules – has ensured that the candidates need to appeal to MPs worried about electability, as well as members worried about their ideological purity. But members will decide in the end. With the right wing of the parliamentary party strong enough to be fairly confident that their preferred candidate will make it to that stage, “there’s a good chance that the other one will be a ‘stop the right’ candidate who they think can win with the members,” Freedman said. “That isn’t necessarily the same thing as the one they think would be the best leader.” So, for example, some of them might want Tugendhat or Cleverly, but back Badenoch because they think she can beat Jenrick (above) or Patel. What will the leadership contest be about? In 1997, the EU dominated the debate among MPs – and Hague’s victory against the more obviously electable Clarke was largely the result of the latter’s pro-European instincts. (Members didn’t have a vote then.) “There’s not one big dividing line like that this time,” Freedman said. “That makes it a much hazier fight to analyse.” If the debate post-election has been about whether the party lost because it was too right wing, too left wing, or too incompetent, “at the moment I think incompetence is winning among MPs”, Freedman said – “although I doubt they’d frame it like that. All of the candidates with a serious chance are pitching to both sides.” If there were 50 or 60 surviving Tories rather than 121, “you might have seen an argument about whether there should be an alliance with Reform”, he added. “From here, it’s a big job to beat Labour, but it’s not impossible. So that isn’t on the table.” This means that for MPs “it will be easier to think about electability as a factor”. But they will also need to woo the Daily Telegraph and GB News, the most influential media outlets with Tory members. “If, for example, the final two were Tom Tugendhat and Robert Jenrick, and the Telegraph had really attacked Tugendhat as not conservative enough, it would be very harmful to his chances. So they are going to have to lean towards that audience to a degree.” Sure enough, in announcing his candidacy, Tugendhat threw a bone to the right, declaring that he would be willing to leave the European convention on human rights. Who is the favourite? Early polls of members have put Badenoch in front, with a survey by Queen Mary University of London giving her 31% against 16% for Suella Braverman (who is thought to be unlikely to get enough nominations from MPs to be a candidate), and 15% for Tugendhat. Conservative Home found 28% backing Badenoch, with 13% each for Jenrick and Tugendhat, and 10% for Braverman. “She has positioned herself in the centre of the party, hitting buttons for different groups,” Freedman said. “Anti-woke, pro-growth, a bit of Thatcherite rhetoric – that’s why she’s favourite.” Among the public, on the other hand, Badenoch does not appear to enjoy the same status. A Savanta poll yesterday found that Tugendhat had the strongest approval rating among voters, probably because he is not very well known; Ipsos found the same thing, with Priti Patel the most disliked of the leading candidates. In any case, it’s too early to make a meaningful prediction. “The electorate of MPs is very small,” Freedman said. “It will depend a lot on how they present themselves, and then who the final two are.” Is there a chance of a Hague-style misstep, or – worse – another Truss? “The MPs are conscious of that danger,” Freedman said. “With the possible exception of Priti Patel, they are all much more conventional candidates.” On the other hand, he said, “you can imagine it ending up as, say, Patel against Cleverly, and the membership preferring Patel”. That appears relatively unlikely at the moment. “Short of cutting out the members altogether, which isn’t plausible, they have probably given themselves the best chance of picking someone viable,” Freedman said. “But anybody who says they can confidently predict what they’re going to do yet is bluffing.” | 