Badenoch or Jenrick: which candidate has the best chance of rescuing the Tories?

With just a short time to go until the next leader of the Conservatives is selected, polling expert John Curtice weighs up the pros and cons for each of the frontrunners – and finds that they both have a long way to go

There is reportedly much glee among Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs at the elimination of James Cleverly from the Tory leadership contest. Irrespective of whether Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick emerges as the victor, they reckon the Conservative Party is set to make a right turn that will do little to rehabilitate it in the eyes of most voters.

The polls certainly suggest that Mr Cleverly was the most popular of the four candidates who addressed the Tory conference last week – including not least among those who voted Conservative in July.

Yet, in truth, the key message of the polls has been that none of the candidates is widely known. At least two-thirds of the general public, including half of those who voted Conservative in July, have been unable to express a preference for any of them.

Meanwhile, as has proven to be the case among Tory MPs, none of the candidates has emerged as the clear favourite among those Conservative voters who do express a preference. Mr Cleverly has never had much more than a slight edge.

This creates a dilemma for any Tory member who now wishes to vote for the candidate who has the greater personal appeal. Neither Ms Badenoch nor Mr Jenrick have much of a public profile. Our Tory member is going to have to guess – and hope.

Still, for many Tory activists the big question is: which of the final two is more likely to win back the one in four 2019 Tory voters who this time switched to Reform?

Mr Cleverly was not particularly appealing to this group. Rather, the polls suggest that for them Ms Badenoch has a slight edge, not only over the former home secretary but also Mr Jenrick. Even so, according to YouGov for every one Reform voter who thinks favourably of Ms Badenoch, there is another who regards her unfavourably.

Meanwhile, it looks as though it is Mr Jenrick who is ahead of his rival when current Tory voters are asked how acceptable each of them would be as leader. Any prospect that Ms Badenoch might be better able to win back Reform voters appears to be counterbalanced by a greater risk that some of those who are currently still in the Tory fold might defect.

In short, despite their ideological stances, neither Ms Badenoch nor Mr Jenrick is necessarily well set to heal the electoral divide on the right.

But the more fundamental question is whether they have an adequate understanding of why their party suffered its worst ever electoral result in July – and thus are likely to take the steps needed for their party to regain voters’ trust.

Both candidates appear to believe the fault lies in a failure of the last government to be true to Conservative values. Rather than seeking to limit the size of the state, it presided over the biggest expansion since 1945 – thanks, of course, to the pandemic and the cost of living crisis. Rather than curbing immigration and challenging wokery, it presided over record levels of immigration and accepted too much of the equality and diversity agenda.

However, an examination of the timeline of the Conservatives’ standing in the polls during the last parliament reveals that the party’s precipitous fall from grace was not occasioned by a failure to be truly Conservative.

The first key event that cost the party support was Partygate, which cast doubt on the honesty and ethics of those who had been leading the party. The second was the Liz Truss fiscal event, which severely damaged the party’s reputation for economic competence.

No reversion to “true” Conservative values is going to erase these stains on the party’s copybook.

Moreover, although many Tory members would like to see a reversal of the increase in the size of the state, British Social Attitudes data suggests the lesson voters may have drawn from the pandemic is that perhaps Britain needs a more active state after all – at least until the NHS and the economy have been turned around.

Still, as largely unknown quantities, perhaps either Ms Badenoch or Mr Jenrick will prove able to surprise us – though in order to do so, they are both certainly going to have to reveal a wider range of political talents than they have so far.

John Curtice is professor of politics, Strathclyde University, and senior fellow, National Centre for Social Research and ‘The UK in a Changing Europe’. He is also co-host of the Trendy podcast