Inside the Battle to rule the Conservative Party | The Story

from the times and the Sunday Times this is the story I'm manv [Music] rner it's the Tory Party Conference this week which should be the time for a serious discussion about the state of the party instead it's full of moments a bit like this okay this a sudden Rush down the stairs lots of photographers have got ready so it looks like leadership candidates are making their way in to the first hustings well here we have Robert jenrich coming along doing rather well at the moment how is your campaign going I'm just going to an event

but it's going really well nice to see you so far the leadership contest has lurched between Applause and cheering in the conference Hall to a succession of gaffs and controversy as the four candidates battle it out to set the future direction of the conservative party should the Tories Lurch further to the right or make a bid for the center [Music] ground behind the scenes the knives are out with briefings and counter briefings from the campaign teams in his only appearance at conference the current leader rishy sunak tried to call for Unity whoever wins this contest

give them your backing we must end the division the backbiting the [Music] squabbling today all four leadership hopefuls will take to the conference stage and deliver their big pitch to the members but they won't just be fighting for the leadership this is a battle for the soul of the [Music] party the story today the Tory Hunger [Music] Games I'm here in Birmingham in the Maze that is the international Conference Center and from the moment you walk in it's obvious what this conference is about looming large over the conference Hall a four huge banners with the

faces of each of the leadership candidates emblazened across them but nobody's really talking about what went wrong for the Tories at the election this conference is all about the race to be the next leader [Music] in the running are four candidates who represent different sections of the party Robert genrich and KY badok from the right wing James cleverly who hovers somewhere in the middle and Tom tuanh har who's seen as a one nation [Music] Centrist as conference began Robert genrich was the front runner winning the support of 33 MPS whilst KY badok came second with

28 and jenrick the former immigration Minister seems to have made quite an impression here on some of the Grassroots members I've been a bit of a Robert genck fan for um since he started speaking Etc so um yeah we we shall see but it's all to play for all to play for I haven't made me mind up yet but I was very impressed with Robert jri and his strength oh you're wearing a Robert jri tie yes yeah Robert grik all the way why I I like his social policies as someone who's young and left school

at 15 and isn't like a a massively intellectual person I'm not not going to try and Float my own boat um something that I understand and care about a lot is social policies and I think that we need to have some more rightwing policies many of the members here are still making up their minds some are applauding genrich's tough stance on immigration while others are alarmed to see that his campaign material has been published in the reform party's shade of teal blue which they say is a step too far and there are others who aren't

convinced by genrich's right-wing credentials at all pointing out that he used to be a moderate ABJ anybody besides generic why do you hate Robert jri so much he's fake he's like Boris he's like LZ truss we've had enough of that crap where they're left they become right to win the leadership no thanks I want natural so natural is either cleverly or chemy but definitely not generic I I I just don't trust the guy as the front runner Robert jck has the most to lose here and he's been Keen to avoid any unscheduled unscripted moments when

I spotted him he was surrounded by a group of fresh-faced AIDS charging him across the hall I'm sorry sorry Robert how did that go Hi how are you it went very well as far as I'm concerned but you better ask the members conference you the argument it's going well but uh it's real pleasure to be Robert Robert I tried to grab a proper word with Robert jenrick there as he left his hustings but he ran off avoiding the the media and the entire media scrum ran after him uh along the the conference Hall and his

people basically pushed all all of us out of the way cuz they're desperate for him not to talk he doesn't want to take any risks but that hasn't stopped him making a gaff in a video his campaign released to explain why he wants to leave the European court for human rights he somehow managed to slander British troops our special forces are killing rather than capturing terrorists because our lawyers tell us that if they're caught the European Court will set them free the court is telling the it led to a flurry of difficult interviews and it

raised eyebrows in the party especially from ex-military man and Leadership rival ton tugen har what he said is wrong and I'm afraid demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of military operations and the law of armed conflict I'm extremely concerned that such words should not be seen in any way to encourage uh people to take any action other than surrender to British forces when asked to do so Tom tuanh har who regularly reminds people of his military service is here chasing the center right vote and although he's trailing in the polls he's definitely making his presence felt at

the Party Conference right there's another little flurry down the stairs Here Comes Tom tugen har it's rushing in he's got an Entourage around him wearing cap saying Tom tugen har Tom how's the camp campaign going it's going very well and it's really good fun actually it's nice to be meeting so many members and activists who you know have got the right vision for the future of the party in the country so it's great to be with him he may not agree with his Rivals but he was Keen to put up a unified front I'd love

to have all of them working in my cabinet with and with that he was off again the tanh har campaign is the most noticeable here there are lollipops and sweets with his face on them and his supporters are even sporting temporary tattoos but he's joint bottom in the polls and he hasn't impressed everyone here uh Tom T that know um oh why I I think this a sort of hint of underlying arrogance about Tom tund Das actually and I I'm not sure he's got the intellect I think Robert genrich has because that's really important um

and I think Robert jri sort of got um a bit of Charisma actually which I didn't I hadn't spotted before but I think it really came across so the conference Hall is definitely filling up there's a long snaking queue of people trying to get in to the rishy sunak event it is does seem to be the only one he's at so I guess this is their only opportunity um we're outside another counter event at the same time Brave which is a Tom tuen har reception for conservative home it's a much smaller room and it's completely

rammed there's a queue of people waiting to get in outside we can see them holding wine glasses that say tan Taps there are a lot of Tuan totes around and a lot of pictures of the man himself inside we can win the next general election everybody I give you Tom just being introduced here he comes we need to choose leadership we need to choose service and we need to choose to act on conservative principle that's why I'm standing To Be Your Leader that's why I know we can win the next general election and that's why

we are going to create the next conservative government together thank you outside the drinks I ran into Lord Ashcroft whose blog conservative home was hosting the event he's a man who has a lot of influence over the party a prolific donor and pollster who's even served as Deputy chairman I haven't got a particular candidate that I am supporting I just hope that whoever is appointed that they will actually work with each other and the undermining which we saw over the last few years will go and there won't be jocking around to to try to become

uh leader and every one of them should and needs to be in the shadow cabinet and I hope that whoever does win that they will put their support behind it be a little bit less grumpy about having uh lost the election there's a lot of chatter here about the party needing to move further to the right needing to meet reform where it's winning votes what do you think it needs to do in order to win the next election well they've got to try and recreate the Coalition of Voters uh that enable Boris to win the

way he did in 2019 and that is not only to appeal to your core voters but you've also got to appeal to a certain number of Labor voters and liberal Democrat voters as well but at the same time you must determine what is the center of gravity of the silent majority of the nation and not always follow the center of gravity of the rockus minority and every candidate needs to to find that center of gravity on every issue and then determine whether that issue to that center of gravity is something which he in all his

conscience can either support or if he doesn't support it to adequately explain why he cannot support that so there's a matter of Integrity in here I often say of of politicians uh do you want Power without principles or do you want principles without power and that's always an interesting question you rarely get an honest answer or they try to adapt the sentences but if they had to choose with a gun at their head what would a politician choose and I'll leave it for you to work out what a successful politician would choose this conference is

the best opportunity to meet the Grassroots members who will be voting for the next leader and one candidate who's taking full advantage of the opportunity is James cleverly the former foreign secretary there is some criticism here that no one really knows what he stands for but he's making up for the lack of Headlines by being the candidate who's always Walking the Floor shaking hands taking selfies getting to know the members he's always hand inand with his wife I managed to chase them both down a corridor James how's the campaign going uh it's going well I

think it's going well it's uh look this is Party Conference I've always loved Party Conference this is where you meet the members meet the family the conservative family get grilled by you lot I've always been comfortable doing both so this I'm in my element love it would you be happy to work in a cabinet with any of the other candidates these are my friends they I mean I know it's lovely to try and create these stories about division these are my friends as well as my colleagues that it's a really really talented bunch and I

look at I look at my I look at the conservatives here today at every level and compare them with the shambles of what we saw in the labor conference and it puts me in really good spirits people are saying this is a battle for the soul of the party though which way would you like it to go would you like it to go further to the right to to outdo reform or are you a Centrist heart those those completely artificial and nonsensical divisions that's not that's not how I think what this is about this is

about maximizing our appeal this is about winning back voters from reform and the libdems and labor and people that stayed at home it's about being a bigger party that is what I've always believed in that is what I'm going to pursue uh and that's what I'm going to do as leader the real story at this conference is ky badok for years now she's been talked about as the future of the party there are a surprising number of young people here for a Tory Party Conference and they tend to Cluster around the chemi stand uh I'm

20 19 I'm 20 21 19 um you're very excited about the future of the party they have just lost an election pretty spectacularly what makes you feel like this is where the momentum is because that seems quite surprising I think this is probably the greatest opportunity we've had as a party to really reevaluate our ideology and rebuild it for for for this new century I'm looking forward to this next leadership campaign uh I really want to look towards candidates like jich or B KN who aligned with me economically it's very rare that you have a

politician that will stand up and defend principles like capitalism and it's it's very inspiring it's very exciting to hear kemi defend it very publicly yeah I'm team K me team what why um I like her views I like her stance on immigration I like her stance on the economy I think she actually sticks up for the working people which is very important for the conservative party to stick up for them and not just be for the elite but conference kicked off badly for her after an interview she did on times radio on Sunday morning do

you think we've got the right level of maternity pay at the moment uh so maternity pay varies depending on who you work for but it is a function uh where it's statutory maternity pay it is a function of tax tax comes from people who are working we're taking from one group of people and giving to another this in my view is excessive businesses KY bad knock's campaign backtrack in a statement and even blamed Robert genrich's team for misrepresenting her there are a lot of rumors here at conference about the generic campaign using the dark arts

against bad knck but one former MP told me that kemy was blaming Robert jri for everything and she'd allowed him to live in her head rentree in the meant time her comments on maternity pay caused such a controversy that they've hijacked the news agenda for the rest of conference in the past 24 hours you've had to issue a tweet a video an interview interview with Sky News to explain what you meant on times radio and all the critics going to be hearing is your Ator want a cut returns you pay are you no I think

maternity pay is quite important and this was actually a long discussion we were having about the role of the state in deciding what businesses should do but let's take a step back there were huge cues outside the hall to hear the straight talking former trade secretary and former women's Minister defend her stance on maternity pay when you are a leader when you are a conservative when you are making the argument for conservative principles your opponents are going to try and turn it into something else we need to decide who's going to be leader of the

party not the left not the guardian not the BBC just conservatives her confidence performance has certainly won around some of the members but some of the party Grandes here were unimpressed when she pulled out of her hustings at the last minute and it didn't go down very well with the Grassroots either no KY bad knck no that was a bit of a surprise but um I think she's obviously got other things to think about at the moment so we'll see were people disappointed that she didn't I think yeah people would have liked to have heard

from her but um yeah she hasn't been as visible as some of the other candidates so yeah we'll see when she did emerge her campaign was Keen to keep her away from reporters uh so KY badok has just left the event she's done um there's a huge number of people in there now now she hasn't been around much here the last couple of days so the media there's a bit of a scrum everyone's trying to get a word kimy KY are there dirty tricks being used in the campaign getting pictur KY there's a whole formation

around here you can't get anywhere near herbody got a group of people arranged to to meet her greet her with with cheers and Applause she's Keen to be among them she's not so Keen to be among the journalists um her team were desperate to whisk her [Music] away just run into a conference regular our very own Aubry aligi Chief political correspondent Aubrey how's it going how weird is this conference you go to a lot of them it's probably the strangest of the three cuz we started with the liberal Democrats which was completely jubilant then we

got to the labor party which was quite stayed the message seemed to be don't smile too much don't look too happy change won't come too quickly and here we've got conservative conference where I think the expectation was that it would be quite ferial and I wouldn't say that the conference atmosphere is electric or exciting but it's certainly not as bad as people expected a lot of the big beasts people like pretty Patel S bravman no sign of them here it's just a big leadership contest it certainly is and actually there's a lot of former MPS

sort of wandering around some of them have even rather tragically got former member of parliament on their badges instead of conservative member and all leadership candidates have a stand to be able to sort of attract members give out merch James cleverly did bevs with cevs on the first night that was drinks with supporters in the main conference Hotel bar you wouldn't think anyone would want to be reminded of Fizz with Liz no well I mean we've had them all now uh fizzz with Liz schnaps with shnaps and now bevs with cevs so it's it's the

way to go to make a name for yourself what did each of the candidates have to have to prove what do they need how did they need to use conference to their advantage so kemy Bok is probably the person who's got the most approve at this conference because she was the presumed front runner it was sort of accepted that she for the last few years would be the person who would gain the mantle from rishy sunak and take over his story leader but so far she has been in second place in the votes amongst the

Parliamentary party and so she has to prove that she is worth keeping in this race in a week's time MPS will vote to narrow down the field to just the top two and then it goes out to the Grassroots and all the polling there suggests that KY badok would come out on top so the Robert genrich team will be hoping that she doesn't make it to the second round there are concerns amongst the team that there will be a stop kemi campaign to try and get James cleverly or Tom tuen hat just squeaking ahead of

her in terms of the Parliamentary votes that are happening on the 9th and the 10th of October and so basically what she's got to prove is she's good enough to make it to the final two and get enough members to say that they want her on the ballot paper to vote for her you mentioned the stop kemy campaign everyone we talk to is being very polite and saying nice things about their Rivals but that's not what's happening behind the scenes just give us a sense of how messy this campaign is getting how fractious how divided

so certainly compared to the 2022 leadership contest this hasn't quite been as gloves off because the conservatives instituted this yellow card system so they're effectively trying to call out and punish anyone who on the record knowingly briefs against another candidate but that isn't obviously stopping them from saying everything off the Record there have been briefings about candidates being missing an action you know popping into events only to leave 5 minutes later not turning up to hustings that's all being noticed by some of the sort of senior people here who are running the receptions I've heard

from one uh Tom tuen hat Ally who asked how can anyone think that KY Bok is a credible candidate after her comments about maternity pay they said neither her nor jich represent what we need they are both petroleum for the bin fire that is our reputation and another source close to Tom toen said I thought we were the party of aspiration didn't realize we no longer support women who want to have a career after KY bade knock's uh comments about maternity pay so that is a picture of what's going on behind the scene and certainly

those close to Rob jich also think that they should have exploited this more they thought it was a rare moment where she made a they say policy misstep and they could attack her and criticize her based on comments she'd made not about her personality yeah they really aren't holding back um there have been rumors here that Robert shri's campaign team are doing a lot of briefing against KY badok what are you hearing well I mean I think it's certainly true to say that they see her as the their main rival and so yeah there are

certainly lots of cheem supporters uh who are throwing accusations at Robert jri and vice versa but ultimately the conference has been relatively good natured so far I think some of the dividing lines we're seeing are really emerging around whether or not the party should ape reform or whether it should sort of distance itself from it as much as possible and that question about whether or not the conservatives were too right-wing or not rightwing enough is dominating this conference you've got Robert jri saying that under him the conservatives should wear reforms clothes and then people like

the leading One Nation MP and Shadow Minister Alysia Kerns saying that the party can't afford to become reform light so that question is very much yet to be settled Aubrey when in the past when there has been a leadership campaign at the same time as conference we saw it when David Cameron beat David Davis it can be the moment that really makes or breaks a candidate that's what happened you know the favorite was David Davis Cameron came out the winner who are the winners and who are the losers with this one so it's a bit

too early to sort of say overall but KY bade KNX comments about maternity pay however they were interpreted her reaction to it I don't think has helped the situation she's saying that she was in the middle of answering a question and she was interrupted and that's why she said what she said but I think ultimately people will say well if you want to be the next leader of the conservative party or the next prime minister then you're going to have to watch exactly what you're saying and if a journalist asks you another question in the

middle of answering another one then responds to the question that's been asked of you don't carry on and risk that misinterpretation she obviously has to prove that she can make it through to the final too and so far I'm not hearing very many people saying that they're convinced that so far she can [Music] this feels like a very odd conference there aren't many of the big Beasts of the party here you know rishy sunak arrived for one event right at the start and then promptly disappeared um Jeremy Hunt is around but he's keeping a low

profile while the Boris Johnson's and pretty patels and swell braans haven't even turned up one former prime minister who did raise some eyebrows by doing an event here is Liz truss we're recording Liz Liz are are you proof that these leadership battles don't always work out very well contributed to that Liz are you are you proof that these um when the party votes for a leader it often turns out really badly excuse me I signes I don't think she's going to comment so that was a Classic Conference moment we spotted some cameras gathering around one

of the doors and that usually means there's somebody about to come out and very quickly that crowd grew there was suddenly a huge scrum of cameras and reporters photographers all on the one Corridor and that's qu that's been quite rare at this conference so we thought we'd better go and we'd better go and join them it turns out they were waiting for Liz trust to come out of her event and she is even though she's not running for leader obviously and nobody here would say she's the future of the party she is the one everybody

wants to have a word with I tried to grab a really quick word I'm not sure she was very keen uh she didn't say very much in return and I'm not sure I really helped her view of journalists AR any real afraid they're just kind of Liz truss was one of the leaders who led the party further to the right after David Cameron's Centrist Coalition but is that what the party needs now I tracked down some of the other former MPS here to see see what they thought my name is Tobias Elwood Fallen political star

this place is crawling with former MPS it is and I really interesting that we some of us feel our time's not done yet we've still got another lap to go therefore we've actually got skin in the game we're interested to know where the party is going to move next so we would like to be part of that debate make sure we don't go crazy super right stay moderate um Center ground broad church people like myself hopefully to come back well tell me about that because you are more of a center right politician a lot of

people here think the party should be turning to the further right at the moment it should be trying to compete with reform on its own ground how would you feel about the party if it did turn into that so that is the analysis that needs to be done and My worry is I said this from the very start let's have a long campaign firstly understand who we are as a party what do we stand for look back in our history go back to Disraeli Baldwin Churchill flatcher it was all Cent right that's the the area

The Sweet Spot in British politics you vacate that as we showed with Tony Blair boy they jumped straight in there and to some degree K stama did that as well Lord ashro just has been polling and it ask that question why didn't you vote conservative was it because they weren't rightwing enough no it was because we were incompetent we just didn't look the part we were arguing amongst ourselves and we weren't pursuing the right policies so there's lots of homework to do but the idea that somehow we jump on board with reform that's going to

provide a mathematical solution to this is absolutely political uh illiteracy it really is could I just get you to introduce yourself to our listeners yes s Fox that's former trade secretary under Theresa May defense secretary under David Cameron and Arch brexiteer s Liam Fox the conservative party needs to be a broad Coalition it needs to be able to appeal to a wide part of the political Spectrum on the center right and right and it can't choose which bits it wants to be in and therefore the party needs to coales around ideas and principles rather than

personalities and I think that that is changing and shaping the nature of the debate around the leadership does it need to go further to the right Mr ster used to say we avoid external coalitions by maintaining internal coalitions and the conservative party needs to be a broad enough coalition to be able to reflect the wide range of the voters who will support us whether you like it or not K stammer maintained his Coalition better in the run-up to election than we did we fr mented they won we [Music] lost my name is Daniel finlin I'm

a columnist on the Times newspaper how many of these have you been to now oh Lots I mean I think the first conservative conference I came to as a member would have been 1992 Danny has also been a key advisor to successive Tory leaders and he's been a regular fixture at the T Party Conference for years he has a real sense of the mood of the party and he's seen it undergoing Transformations before particularly after losing an election you know and the rest of it so this is in my view the biggest crisis the conservative

party is faced in its history that's not just because of the size of the conservative vote 24% only 121 seats but also because it's facing this dilemma of losing votes to two different ends of the Spectrum to the liberal Democrats and labor on on one hand and to the Reform Party on the other and you know losing half of its vote at the 2019 election to the 2024 election so I think this is more serious even than the situation we faced in 1997 when it was sort of easier to think how to respond going back

to those periods though while it tried to work out which way it needed to go and how it needed to rebuild it went through a lot of leaders you know I think my first conference is 2003 with sort of Ian Duncan Smith being the quiet man who wanted to turn the volume up but you know it went through about three leaders before you got to a point where it could be electable again is there a sense that the the beauty pageant that's taking place here is it almost pointless does it matter who gets in no

look the one of the differences between the 1997 election and this one was not just that the conservative party did really really badly but actually labor did quite badly too so the conservative party lost something like 21% of the vote and in England the labor party only went up by 0.5% of the vote and already you can see with just a few points off which you would expect from a governing party the labor party is already under 30 so it's already in a position which traditionally would have been regarded as quite perilous for a mainstream

political party so the conservative party does not need to take more than a decade to get back into power on the other hand the situation it's in is you know deeper and more serious in its own right so it's it's complicated is it bad for the party to be having a big leadership contest here to see the divisions at the four to see people battling it out against each other briefing against each other no I I I'm I'm in favor of that I think an argument is a good thing at this point I I don't

think it'll have a big effect on the next general election of the conservative party argues now and it ought to debate the position that it's in and actually what's really interesting when you here is there isn't one candidate who you think that person is Miles Ahead Boris Johnson when he was running for the leadership in 2019 it was pretty obvious he was going to win the leadership contest right from the outset this one it's not obvious and I couldn't necessarily tell you who would win so it'll be interesting to see this is the third time

the conservative party has chosen its leader with the conference interceding obviously the conference isn't choosing the leader the first time was when Harold McMillan resigned he was Ill on the eve of the Party Conference and lots of people thought that uh Lord haam would be the next leader of the conservative party or possibly Reggie morling came to the Party Conference first Lord hon was seen to be sort of Crash and pushing it too much he had these badges with Q on them for Quentin which is his first name people thought was uh unimaginably crass b'

be horrified now he also by the way um which is interesting from a modern standpoint it was very much marked down for being seen to feed his baby in the lobby of the conference Hotel um which was regarded as uh blatant electioneering and seeking popular press and Alec Douglas Hume who became leader really appealed to the conference the membership really liked him and that really helped him win the leadership and of course famously uh in 2005 David Cameron came here definitely a challenger but certainly the underdog made a speech at the conference and completely within

a period of 15 minutes turned the conference around because people were seeking something new Danny is somebody who has worked so closely within the party for many many years decades really um but also who has such a good understanding of the electorate what do you think the party needs to be doing does it need to be moving to the right I'll be completely honest I'm not sure that I've heard from any of the candidates the kind of serious analysis that the party needs in order to win you know the things that David Cameron used to

win the leadership and the situation is different now I I understand that um but some of these rules still hold to show optimism a sense of the future a really deep truthful analysis of the depth of the problem for the conservative party in terms of its brand have any of the candidates yet shown that I'm not sure they have um the conservative party needs to appeal at the same time to reform and liberal Democrat defectors I think that is actually possible I don't think the gap ideologically between those people is that great they both abandoned

the conservative party for pretty similar reasons they thought it was incompetent it lacked Integrity it wasn't able to deliver the things that it believed in and it they therefore scattered in lots of different directions it's difficult to gather them all together but the advantage of this is that you're not probably looking to go in two different directions I think if you reestablish yourself as a sensible mainstream party of government get the right brains and you are assiduous and serious enough about it it can be done Dan you started off saying this was the greatest crisis

the party had been in in your time having been at conference now mean you optimistic about the future of the party I don't yet see what I think I need to see in terms of a really attractive view of the future trying to attract new constituencies even the talk that we've been having you know I've fallen into the Trap myself about who to win back doesn't talk about the voters that party was already losing and um the future of the country in terms of younger people and working people that were not voting conservative so I

I would say if I was asked without being prompted about optimism I I would say that I was concerned about the center right actually the biggest asset of the conservative party is that's where a lot of Voters are where most voters are and where elections can be won but it is persuading voters that the conservative party can represent and govern for the center right that is a big task and do I see things that make me super confident that the party grasps that and is in that place no but I'm not in despair about it

because I think it is quite open they haven't committed themselves down a road that really means they go the wrong direction they just haven't chosen yet that was Danny now Lord finlin and you heard earlier from Aubrey alrti our chief political correspondent you also heard from the former MPS selam Fox and Tobias Elwood Tory donor and pollster Lord Ashcroft and you almost heard from Liz truss you can follow all of our coverage from the Tory leadership race at the times.com with a subscription the producer today was Sam chantar assac the executive producer was Kate Ford

and sound design and theme music were by maleto if you enjoyed this do drop us a line tell us where you'd like to hear us reporting from next our email is the storythe times.com and thanks to all the listeners who came to say hello in Birmingham we loved meeting you we'll be back tomorrow thanks for listening [Music]