The Tory leadership race must be fought on the centre ground

Editorial: The Conservatives must resist the urge to lurch to the right in response to Reform UK’s success and instead come together to appeal to party moderates

Suella Braverman is struggling to even make the first round of the Tory party leadership race (PA)

The Conservative Party is right to play it long and give itself time to reflect on its beating by the voters on 4 July before choosing Rishi Sunak’s successor as leader. The winner of its leadership contest will not be known until 2 November.

To regain the public’s trust, the Tories need to rediscover the competence which helped them retain power for 67 of the past 100 years. Despite fatuous claims from right-wingers that Mr Sunak is not a “real Conservative”, incompetence rather than ideology was the driving force behind the worst defeat in the party’s history.

As nominations for the leadership election close on Monday, there are some worrying signs the party will lapse into the infighting which repelled many voters in recent years. Kemi Badenoch, the favourite, has accused an unnamed rival candidate of issuing a “dirty dossier” about her. She has clashed with Suella Braverman, who hopes to enter the race but has lost support to her former deputy at the Home Office, Robert Jenrick. Dame Priti Patel, another former home secretary, says it is time to end the “soap opera” and put “unity before personal vendetta”.

Indeed, there is a desire to emerge as the “unity candidate,” a pitch made by James Cleverly, yet another ex-home secretary, who seems in a stronger position than his rival for that mantle – Mel Stride, the former work and pensions secretary. Ms Badenoch’s combative approach will appeal to Tory members who want to take the fight to Labour, but she has made enemies inside her own party too and now needs to win friends.

Rival campaigns must ensure the election becomes a grown-up debate about what the party stands for, rather than a platform for more internal feuding. Inevitably, candidates are pandering to the grassroots members who will elect the leader from a shortlist of two chosen by the party’s 121 MPs. Dame Priti offers members a chance to elect the party chair and “a much greater voice” on policy. Tom Tugendhat, the One Nation Tory standard-bearer, raised eyebrows by being open to the UK withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), an institution he previously defended.

It is a pity grassroots members have retained the power to elect the Tory leader. This would have been a good moment to hand the job back to MPs, though that would have met strong resistance from the members. MPs will whittle down candidates who win 10 nominations to a list of four, who will address the Tory conference at the end of September, before MPs agree the two names for the members’ ballot.

There is still time to improve the system: MPs should hold an indicative ballot of the final two, a move favoured by Sir Graham Brady, the former 1922 Committee chair. It would not be binding, but would show members which candidate enjoyed most support among MPs.

This would reduce the chances of the grassroots electing a leader who lacked such support, as they did in 2022 by choosing Liz Truss, with disastrous consequences. Whether the members will learn from that mistake remains to be seen, although history suggests the most right-wing candidate will win the run-off.

The candidates should have the courage to disown Ms Truss and Boris Johnson for their mini-Budget disaster and Partygate lies respectively; Mr Sunak paid an electoral price for not doing so. The Tories will not regain the public’s confidence until they sweep the stables clean from the stench of the Johnson and Truss eras.

The Tories should resist the temptation to lurch to the right – for example, by opposing net zero measures and waging a culture war on “wokery” – in response to Reform UK’s success in wooing their natural supporters. They will never be able to “out-Farage” Nigel Farage. The Tories also need to win back voters who drifted off to the Liberal Democrats and Labour. They should remember the maxim that elections are won in the centre ground.

It will be a long road back for the Tories. Yet the path might not be as daunting as it looks; this month’s election showed that a volatile electorate can sweep away a government it dislikes no matter how large its majority. Sir Keir Starmer led Labour from its worst defeat since 1935 back to power in one go when few gave him any chance.

The Tories will not make such a recovery if they surrender the centre ground to Labour and the Lib Dems. More importantly, they have a duty to the public to provide the strong but sensible opposition the country needs to hold the new government to account.