In less than a month’s time, the next leader of the Tory party—and, they would like us to believe, the leader of Britain’s conservative movement—will be announced. Now that former home secretary James Cleverly has been booted out of the race, party members will have to choose between Kemi Badenoch, who previously served as business secretary, and Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister.
Neither of these candidates is likely to change the party for the better.
That is according to Ben Harris-Quinney, chairman of Britain’s oldest conservative think tank, The Bow Group, and a long-time critic of excessive liberalism within the Conservative Party. He told The European Conservative that “no candidate for Tory leadership who went along with their 14-year travesty of a government to the left of Blair can be trusted, whatever they say.”
Both Badenoch and Jenrick fall deeply into that category.
On the all-important issue of immigration, Badenoch has flat-out refused to commit to a cap on legal immigration numbers, or to leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, which has made it all the more difficult to control the border against illegal movement. Yet she has somehow acquired the title of “darling of the Right.”
Not that Jenrick—whose record is far fuller with regards to rhetoric than it is to action—is much better on this front.
Harris-Quinney explained that in order to “regain the essential support of the conservative movement, the Conservative Party needs bold action, not words, before they try to regain government. A deep and ruthless purge, and a pragmatic approach to working with [Nigel Farage’s] Reform.” Yet, “both [Badenoch and Jenrick] have said they seek to annihilate Reform rather than cooperate.”
Reform has the leader in Farage, but the Conservatives have the infrastructure and resources. If they both wake up to reality now, they can see Labour out in a term.
Without cooperation, a Labour government, that people want rid of after three months, will continue for a decade by default.
Commenting on the particular records of both the candidates, the Bow Group chairman dismissed Badenoch as “someone who felt Michael Heseltine should remain in the Conservative Party, a man who advocated an autocratic overturning of the Brexit vote. And Jenrick was until a few years ago a self-declared Cameron-following centrist.”
Harris-Quinney concluded that whoever wins, they are “almost certain to talk a good game and do the opposite whenever given the chance, as they have done since the mid-1990s.”
The winner will be declared on November 2nd.
