July 9, 2024 - 7:00am

In the run-up to the general election there was a lot of speculation about how defeat on different scales would shape the parliamentary Conservative Party.

While under the party’s constitution the membership makes the final choice in a leadership contest — a choice which matters a lot, given the day-to-day omnipotence of the leader in the party’s affairs — it is the MPs who decide which two candidates are placed before them. Would a heavy defeat tilt the playing field towards one faction or another?

Academic analysis before the election by Tim Bale and David Jeffery suggested not, and the results seem to have borne that out. It was certainly a brutal night for the One Nation caucus, but Thursday also saw the Red Wall wiped out, and the loss of high-profile Right-wingers such as Miriam Cates. In announcing his interim shadow cabinet last night, Rishi Sunak had his hand guided by a record 12 Cabinet members losing their seats. Though there is no clear bent to the new Tory top team, there are — aside from Kemi Badenoch at Levelling Up — few prominent representatives from the party’s Right.

Survey the list of the 121 MPs who make up the rump Conservative caucus, and there are still plenty of identifiable characters from both wings. On the Right we have the likes of Danny Kruger, Christopher Chope, Mark Francois, Edward Leigh, and Desmond Swayne; on the Tory Left remain such figures as Caroline Nokes and Karen Bradley.

By the same token, the pool of potential leadership challengers hasn’t been winnowed as much as it might have been. Of the names being bandied about before polling day only two, Penny Mordaunt and Grant Shapps, lost their seats on the night.

This might well prove significant, especially Mordaunt’s defeat in Portsmouth North. While she was never a favourite for the leadership — one suspects she would have been devilled, as last time, by her infamous book — the former defence secretary was one of the strongest candidates the Tory Left was likely to field. Even so, they are not without options: Victoria Atkins, James Cleverly, and Tom Tugendhat could all make plausible leadership pitches to — and from — that wing of the party.

The Right, meanwhile, is relatively spoilt for choice, with Badenoch, Suella Braverman, Robert Jenrick, and Priti Patel all sniffing around the top job, though enthusiasm for Braverman in particular is waning. Indeed, the challenge for Right-wing MPs could be coordination, to make sure they don’t accidentally put a weak candidate in the final two on a split vote.

Focusing on big names and known factionalists, however, risks overlooking the mass of MPs in the middle who haven’t developed a strong ideological profile — a tendency compounded by the Tory Party’s tendency over the past few elections to select, and elect, local candidates, particularly councillors. In government, this can be a boon for the leadership when it comes to party management. But the ease with which the Conservatives lapsed into managerialism in office, and their chronic failure on big issues such as housing, highlights why it could be a problem.

With their benches packed with “local champions”, it will be tempting for the next leader to take the easy option of attacking Labour’s plans to, for example, build on the green belt, without developing an alternative pitch to voters. We saw last week where that road ends.


Henry Hill is Deputy Editor of ConservativeHome.

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