Cleverly deals a blow to Jenrick and Badenoch

There is, after all, only so many times even the friendliest of audiences can be told the same thing. Candidate after candidate spoke of their hatred of platitudes, their willingness to tell the truth, that they wouldn’t apologise for the Tory record (usually before apologising for the Tory record from 2010 to 2024). 

The candidates all like Margaret Thatcher (and/or Ronald Reagan), want more defence spending, controlled borders, and the like. No-one wanted to do anything foolish, like challenge the beliefs of the Tory selectorate even slightly. 

Tom Tugendhat was the first of the four to speak, and unfortunately for him very much came across as the warm-up act, an impression solidified by his unfortunate choice to do a school assembly style “shall we try that again?” when his first welcome from the audience was distinctly muted.

“Muted” remained the watchword for Tugendhat – usually a well-liked and regarded MP and minister, including beyond the traditional Tory base – throughout his remarks. Jokes received polite applause and no laughs, promises to legally cap migration at 100,000 got… polite applause, a promise to build homes for young people got total silence, and Tugendhat walked off the stage to polite applause, and the knowledge that his leadership run is surely over.

The other underdog going into the speeches was James Cleverly, who gave a much better speech than any of his rivals, and who is now a favourite among the bookies to make it to the final two. Cleverly was the only one of the contenders who actually got a laugh out of the room, as well as by some margin the most convincing applause – including, oddly, a round of applause for revealing he is a Warhammer hobbyist.

Cleverly mixed the usual upbeat mood music – the Tories attending conference were oddly cheerful for a party just handed its worst result in history – with veiled jabs at his rivals. “Let’s be more normal” was a good pitch both to the room at conference and to the wider nation. Cleverly hit the obligatory policy applause lines – defence spending to 3%, abolish bad taxes like stamp duty, and so on.

Cleverly’s speech descended into a rambling final section that made it almost ten minutes too long – and felt like it included at least five distinct endings – but was otherwise strong, and helped by his main rivals faltering.

It was Robert Jenrick who had to follow Cleverly, and sadly for the man who entered the day as the frontrunner, his performance reminded more than one person in the audience of the old unkind “Robert Generic” nickname he had once been given. Jenrick’s stumbling opening took far too long to get to its dénouement, that he was a 2020s version of Thatcher, ready to transform his party (even if he does say so himself).

Someone had obviously written some jokes for Jenrick, mostly about the Labour cabinet, and he determinedly shoehorned each and every one of them in, mostly just losing any sense of direction in his broader remarks. When he found his direction again, it was to announce his “five stands” for “a new Conservative Party” – which not only sounded a lot like the 2019 and 2024 Tory Party, but a lot like what the other candidates were offering: secure borders, small state, 3% for defence, get Britain building, do net zero but not like Ed Miliband.

Ending with all the verve and panache of the after-dinner speaker of the Basingstoke Better Business Bureau, Jenrick ended with a pledge “to unite around the practical solutions to the challenges we face”. Onward to the barricades, Comrades!

That left Kemi Badenoch to try to pick up the audience for a final speech, and the best that can be said for her remarks is that she was entirely on-brand. Badenoch opened by condemning politicians who were scared of telling the truth, instead telling audiences what they wanted to hear, and promising to tell the truth herself.

Badenoch’s next uncomfortable truth for the audience was that politicians shouldn’t be afraid of doing the right thing, and that Conservatives should act like Conservatives. Defending wealth is good, as is cutting taxes. Bold, fearless truth-telling it was not.

The impression that Badenoch left was that her brand of Conservatism is essentially a combination of relentless culture wars and a Liz Truss-esque loathing of every British institution that might constrain a Tory government – a list she reeled off included “a plan that looks at our international agreements, at the HRA, the equality act, at judicial review and judicial activism, at the treasury and the Bank of England, at devolution and quangos, at the civil service and the health service”.

Badenoch’s speech finished to the polite but brief applause of an audience full of people acutely aware they will now need to run if they’re going to make their train out of Birmingham, probably having solidified herself as the favourite candidate of Labour supporters.

There wasn’t much in the way of substantive differences between the candidates, not least because there was almost no substance across the speeches. James Cleverly has probably got himself into the final two, and Tugendhat – who needed a breakthrough to stay in the race – has probably ruled himself out, meaning it’s between Jenrick and Badenoch for the other slot.