Senior Tories are pleading with the party to avoid the “weapons-grade idiocy” of a further drift to the right, amid a concerted and organised effort from grandees to stop a kneejerk leadership contest. Figures from Rishi Sunak’s cabinet, prominent MPs who lost their seats and former prime minister David Cameron are among those involved in working to secure a repeat of the 2005 contest, which eventually saw Cameron installed as leader seven months after an election defeat. A “three-way fight” to replace Sunak is already emerging, with Kemi Badenoch, Tom Tugendhat and Priti Patel the early candidates. Party sources said all three had leadership teams ready and waiting once election defeat was confirmed. Badenoch is currently seen as having the broadest appeal. Her rejection of the possibility of Nigel Farage ever joining the Tories has endeared her to the party’s liberal wing, and she already has some support on the right. Former chancellor Jeremy Hunt will not attempt another leadership bid after resisting intense Lib Dem efforts unseat him, and former home secretary James Cleverly is still considering his options. On the right, Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick are seen as the likely contenders. However, there is hope among influential figures that a longer contest, with this year’s party conference used as a “beauty parade” to test leading candidates’ communication skills, could see an outsider emerge and herald a new generation of frontline Conservative politicians. Victoria Atkins, the former health secretary, is seen as one such possibility.
In the meantime, there is an immediate drive to stop any drift to the right after Reform UK took votes from Conservative candidates across the country. Some on the right have already advocated a deal with Farage and his party. Writing in the Observer, former deputy prime minister Damian Green, who lost his Ashford seat last week, says concluding that the party had not appealed enough to “real conservatives” risks killing it off. “Saying to millions of potential Conservative voters that they are not Conservative enough is weapons-grade idiocy in a first-past-the-post electoral system,” he writes. “If the Conservative party starts becoming ideologically exclusive it will wither and die.” Several figures from Sunak’s cabinet want a protracted contest, something Green also advocates. “Take time over this decision, because some of us remember that the last time we did this we went through three leaders before we happened on one who brought us back to power,” he writes. Lord Pickles, the former party chairman, told the Observer that a combination of “panic and displacement activity” risked seeing the party draw the wrong conclusions from the election result. “There’s something almost childlike about it – just do this one thing and everything will be better again,” he said. “The problem is not Farage. The problem is us, the Conservative party. We need to rebuild trust, we need to detoxify the brand and we need to start getting back to basic Conservative principles, which are very straightforward – it’s about enterprise, respect of the law and upholding of public service. Thatcher understood that. It takes a real leader to hold all those kinds of things together.”
He, too, backed a 2005-style contest. “Party conference should be able to see the candidates,” he said. “That performance can have a material effect. David Cameron was very much the outsider until his magnificent conference speech.” However, others warn against a lengthy tussle to find a new leader, including some close to Sunak. They point to the 2010 Labour leadership contest, during which the Tories successfully pushed the idea that Labour had overspent and could not be trusted with public finances. “The general mood seems to be that we’d like a new leader in place by September,” said one. “We should have somebody holding Labour to account immediately. If there are things Labour do that are politically contentious, they’ll do them in their first six months. You want a new leader there to provide that scrutiny and be the person holding them to account.” Another former cabinet minister doubted that Sunak would stay beyond the announcement of the leadership contest process. One ally pointed out that he had committed to stepping down as Tory leader “once formal arrangements for selecting my successor are in place”. That could mean a caretaker leader is needed before Sunak’s permanent replacement is selected. Some senior figures are desperate to ensure that the party is not handed another figure like Liz Truss, who had support among members but not among most MPs. But a grassroots campaign to resist any attempt to remove the membership’s power to pick a leader from a shortlist of two is already being planned. The selection process first requires the appointment of a new 1922 Committee of Tory MPs, and a chair who will oversee the contest. That should be completed in the next fortnight. Graham Brady, who did that job before he stood down ahead of the election, has been advising MPs on the process.