The Conservative leadership election started on 24 July. That means we’ve had to wait 86 days for the first public debate between the contenders, which eventually came tonight on GB News.
Of course, we only got to see the final two candidates: Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick. A podium debate earlier in the race could have given James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat their chance to shine, but it never came.
Yes, there were the candidates’ speeches at the Conservative Party annual conference, but a compare-and-contrast would have required anyone who wasn’t there to find the footage online and then watch four separate 20-minute monologues back-to-back. Who is going to do that?
That’s why a podium debate is such a user-friendly format — you see the candidates in parallel. Unfortunately, the format for tonight’s debate was serial: an hour of Jenrick followed by an hour of Badenoch (including questions).
Nevertheless, a number of differences between the two hopefuls did stand out. In terms of delivery, Jenrick was calm and fluent, for which he was periodically rewarded with polite applause. Badenoch, by contrast, was animated and insistent, hitting clap-line after clap-line. If the GB News audience is representative of the Conservative Party membership at large, she’ll win easily.
Other than style, the key difference was over policy. For Jenrick, the key to everything is regaining trust over immigration, which in turn means leaving the European Convention on Human Rights. Badenoch, however, is all about principles before policy. “I’m not here to impose what’s in my head on the party,” she said. And as for the ECHR, she’s not sure anyway. A podium debate would have allowed the candidates to challenge one another on this point of tension.
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SubscribeSadly they are irrelevant. They might be great people, have the right policies etc but they are Tories and it would take a long term of real Conservatism in power before I could ever trust them again.
Taken on face value both candidates have something positive to offer but face two major obstacles :-
1 – they would have to lead a conservative Party that is stuffed to the rafters with liberals who will obstruct and undermine any attempt to promote truly conservative policies. Neither candidate gave any indication of how they would deal with that.
2 – even if they can achieve #1 they then have to face an electorate who have heard it all before from the Tories only to be betrayed over and over again. While both recognised the need to restore trust neither of them indicated what they would do (ie actions not words) to achieve that.
As for me, l like Kemi and would like to trust Jenrick but I don’t see any way either of them have a hope of making the Tories electable again in my lifetime. Given the ongoing changes and growth within Reform l will be continuing to support them.