Six ‘children of Brexit’ seek a new direction for the Conservative Party

The Conservative Party car has been tumbling along the highway of British politics for some time now – long before the election it lost a month ago – with its tyres flat on the asphalt, its radio and windscreen wipers broken, no air conditioning, low on oil, peeling upholstery, a few dents in the bodywork, a light bulb out and an overheated engine. No one was surprised when it plunged into a ravine on 4 July.

After the setback (an absolute majority for Labour and a flight of voters on all sides) that left it out of circulation, it is now in the workshop, but the mechanics cannot agree on what needs to be done to get it running again. The most optimistic believe that a few fixes will make it competitive in 2029. Most fear that many parts will have to be changed, the bodywork painted and the situation will take a long time.

With the new Labour government in a frenzy of activity, throwing out proposals every day, bemoaning the state of the car and laying the groundwork for a tax rise in the autumn budget, the Conservatives have fired the starting gun in the race to succeed Rishi Sunak (who will against his will remain at the wheel until a successor is found in November).

There are six candidates to drive the Tory car in the UK Politics Grand Prix : Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch, James Claverly, Priti Patel, Tim Tugendhat and Mel Stride. All of them children of Brexit survivors of Boris Johnson’s purges and, for what has historically been the Conservative Party, among its right and far right wings, closer (so to speak) to Donald Trump than to David Cameron or Edward Heath.

Their obsession is to win back the four million voters who have gone to the far right.

While Labour sees a road as straight as the Great Plains in the US – the kind where you can put yourself on autopilot, drive down the middle and almost even take a nap without anything happening – the Conservatives see a very different one full of curves that all go to the right on issues such as immigration, taxes, climate change or the culture wars.

It is as if from the back, Tugendhat, Cleverly and Stride are fighting to turn the steering wheel slightly to the right; from the passenger seat, Priti Patel is also fighting but turning more to the right; and in the driver’s seat, Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch are fighting to go in the direction of Trumpism and European neo-fascism that the British Conservative Party has historically been, until Euroscepticism prevailed and Brexit became a reality.

The Tory parliamentary group will carry out a series of selections among the candidates. Two will be eliminated in the coming months, leaving the remaining four to address the convention, outlining their plans for the revival of what has been one of the best-oiled political machines in the West, but is now on hold. After the convention there will be further votes, until only two of the candidates remain standing, and then it will be the party’s tories who will speak out and choose the winner. Their record of success of late is rather questionable, having elevated Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss to the throne (Rishi Sunak, who they did not want, was forced upon them against his will).

The Conservative Party needs to reinvent itself from the opposition, but its centre and centre-left wing (Kenneth Clarke, Philip Hammond, Justine Greening, David Gauke, Oliver Letwin, Dominic Grieve, Rory Stewart, Nicholas Soames…) was purged by Johnson in view of its resistance to Brexit. Of that historically important branch, only buds remain. All the participants in the war of succession are openly Eurosceptic, and to a greater or lesser extent in favour of copying the British way of what Giorgia Meloni in Italy and Marine Le Pen in France are doing. They believe that it is the future, and that the first and essential step for resurrection is to recover the four million voters who have gone to Reform, the far-right party of Nigel Farage. Various analysts question whether this arithmetic is viable and whether the tories can return to power without appealing to liberal and centrist voters.

After the disaster at the polls, the autopsy is inconclusive and there are various theories about the cause of death

Robert Jenrick, the current favourite according to the bookmakers, is an immigration obsessive protected by David Frost, who was the minister who negotiated Brexit in Brussels for Boris Johnson; Kemi Badenoch, also well placed, combative and not at all allergic to controversy, flies the flag of the culture wars (she is anti-woke) and, if she wins, would be the first black woman to lead the Conservative Party; James Cleverly – a mulatto, with an English father and a Sierra Leonean mother – has headed the Foreign and Home Office; Tom Tugendhat, a veteran MP, showed moderation until he saw that it was getting him nowhere and now he declares himself ready to abandon the European Convention on Human Rights; Priti Patel says she aspires to unite the Party, but as head of the Home Office she adopted the mantra of making life as difficult as possible for immigrants so that they do not come; and Mel Stride, of a lower profile and with fewer possibilities, has been Minister of Labour and considers it essential to lower taxes. Six sides to the same coin.