London. It wasn’t even five years ago that Britain’s Conservative Party lived in a different political world. In December 2019, Boris Johnson helped the Tories win a landslide election. “We will get Brexit done,” he promised in his inaugural speech in front of the black-painted door of 10 Downing Street. He kept it.
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Great Britain left the EU on January 31, 2020 and has no longer been a member of the EU Customs Union and Single Market since January 2021. However, after numerous scandals, especially those surrounding numerous parties at the seat of government during the pandemic-related curfews and the short time in office of Liz Truss, which plunged the country’s economy into crisis, things quickly went downhill for the party.
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At the beginning of July, the Conservative government under Johnson’s successor Rishi Sunak suffered a devastating defeat. Labor won 411 seats, the Tories only won 121. Now the party is trying to make a fresh start in order to gradually increase its chances in the national elections, which are expected to take place in 2029. “But it won’t be easy,” Sophie Stowers from the think tank UK in a Changing Europe told this newspaper.
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A key step in a necessary fresh start for the Tories is the election of a new leader. And this brings with it an important question: where should the party develop? Does it want to move more towards the political center or, on the contrary, further to the right? After several rounds of voting by conservative parliamentarians, this question appears to have been resolved before the new party leader is announced on November 2nd.
The remaining candidates are both right-wing conservatives
Both remaining candidates, former immigration minister Robert Jenrick and former trade minister Kemi Badenoch, are considered right-wing conservatives. Stowers explains that the MPs voted for her, among other things, with the Tories’ fear of the right-wing populist Reform UK party under Nigel Farage.
This stole many votes and thus seats from the party under Sunak in July with the promise to take tougher action against migrants. Jenrick and Badenoch are focusing, among other things, on controlling immigration in their campaigns and are therefore seen as the candidates “who can best appeal to and integrate this group of voters,” said Stowers.
No new beginning for the Tories yet
At the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, the main focus was on who would become the new party leader after the defeat in July. The scandals and challenges that cost the Tories the election were not the focus.
Tories govern further to the right in crises
In fact, the Tories tend to move politically to the right in times of crisis. The years following the Brexit vote saw the “rise of a vocal minority of staunch Eurosceptics who pushed the party towards the radical populist right” to counter the threat posed by Farage and his hard-leave Brexit Party from the alliance, said Tim Bale, a political scientist at Queen Mary University of London. However, Stowers doubts that it is the right way to put a right-wing conservative candidate at the head of the conservative party out of a similar reflex.
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Because it is very difficult to win back voters for the Reform Party. Focusing too much on Nigel Farage’s supporters is therefore a risk. Instead, the Conservatives would need to win back both Reform UK voters on the right and those who have defected to Labor or the Liberal Democrats. “It’s a very difficult balancing act.” Stowers believes that when Tory members vote on a new leader by October 31, Kemi Badenoch has the best chance of replacing Rishi Sunak as party leader.
Jenrick lacks credibility
What speaks against Jenrick is that the traditionally right-wing base has doubts about his credibility because he was previously a moderate conservative. Since the Tories are considered to be very unscrupulous when it comes to replacing unsuccessful party leaders, it can never be completely ruled out that ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson will also get another chance if Jenrick or Badenoch fail.
However, that would also be an unscrupulous ignoring of his failure. After all, he was largely responsible for many Britons questioning the integrity of the Conservative Party. Whoever takes the lead, all party leaders face a challenge. “The most important task in the long term is to restore trust in the party’s competence and ability to act,” said the political scientist. And: “This cannot simply be done with a change of leadership.”
