UK's Conservatives face leadership "bloodbath" as party seeks new
direction
Send a link to a friend
[July 05, 2024]
By Elizabeth Piper
LONDON (Reuters) -The recriminations and jostling for top positions
among Britain's Conservative lawmakers began long before Thursday's
crushing election defeat to Labour that some party figures said left the
party facing the prospect of a decade out of power.
After 14 years in government - the last eight marked by chaos and
divisions following the Brexit vote - the Conservatives are now
confronted by an internal struggle among lawmakers, grassroots members
and donors over whether to move further to the right or turn back to the
centre.
Keir Starmer's Labour Party won Thursday's election by a landslide,
achieving a massive majority in parliament. The Conservatives suffered
the worst performance in the party's long history, amid anger over a
drop in living standards and a resurgence of the right-wing Reform UK
party.
Rishi Sunak promptly announced his resignation as prime minister on
Friday and said he would step aside as Conservative leader once
arrangements were made to select his successor, as the party sought to
rebuild.
Reuters spoke to 20 politicians, party members and strategists who said
that Sunak's widely expected departure would trigger a battle among the
institutions that underpin the party - with the right-wing media,
financial backers, think tanks and vocal members all jostling to
influence its direction.
The outcome will help determine whether a party that has governed
Britain alone or in coalition for around 100 years since it was formed
in 1834 can rebuild from a much-diminished state.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2024/Jul/05/images/ads/current/dreamteammow_sda_060324.png)
One veteran Conservative former lawmaker predicted a "bloodbath" as the
party set about charting its way back to power.
"The party will suffer a kind of nervous breakdown, which will continue
for a wee while," said the former lawmaker, who declined to be
identified. "And it's then going to be necessary to find a way forward."
Several lawmakers are expected to compete to replace Sunak, the party
sources said, with the right wing likely to promote two former interior
ministers known for a tough line on immigration - Priti Patel and Suella
Braverman - as well as former trade minister Kemi Badenoch, named
minister of the year by the website ConservativeHome in 2023 after she
took a robust position on trans issues.
Braverman was quick to promise change to voters. "I'm sorry that my
party didn't listen to you," she said in a speech after winning
reelection. "I will do everything in my power to rebuild trust. We need
to listen to you, you have spoken to us very clearly."
The party sources said centrist candidates were also preparing
campaigns, with James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat, interior and security
ministers under Sunak respectively, named as possible contenders.
Indicating the likely arguments ahead, three Conservatives questioned
the right-wing credentials of Robert Jenrick, a former immigration
minister who has been working hard to shore up his support, after he
previously voiced more centrist positions.
Penny Mordaunt, a prominent centrist who was Sunak's Leader of the House
of Commons, had also been consulting colleagues on her chances, but lost
her seat to Labour. Accepting defeat, she warned Conservatives against
talking to "an ever smaller slice of ourselves" as they sought to renew
the party.
Veteran party adviser Peter Botting described the battle for the
leadership as being between those who became Conservative because of
former prime minister Margaret Thatcher - a staunch free-marketeer - and
those who followed the moderniser David Cameron, with his more
paternalistic 'one nation conservativism'.
"People will want big personalities: big, easily identifiable
personalities," Botting said. "There are a lot of eminently forgettable
people but they all think that they can be a prime minister."
THREAT FROM REFORM UK
The former lawmaker said the Conservative Party should move to the
right, to meet the challenge posed by Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage's
Reform UK party. Farage won a seat in parliament at the eighth time of
trying.
While Labour's roughly 34% share of the vote nationwide was far lower
than its showing at its 1997 landslide victory, the resurgence of Reform
UK split the right-wing vote and handed Starmer a massive majority under
Britain's first-past-the-post system.
Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London,
warned that a move to the right would go against "the case that
elections are won in the centre of British politics".
"What we've seen since Brexit is the silent majority of more centrist
MPs allow the party to slip towards the right, due to a much more vocal
minority of more populist politicians on that side of the Conservative
Party," he told Reuters.
By 1110 GMT and with 648 seats counted, Labour had 412 of the 650 seats
in parliament, compared with 121 for the Conservatives, according to
broadcaster BBC.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2024/Jul/05/images/ads/current/ldn_smallsda_BUSINESSMAG_2023.png)
[to top of second column]
|
![](../images/070524PIX/news_v44.jpg)
Outgoing British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak leaves the Conservative
Campaign Headquarters, following the results of the general
election, in London, Britain, July 5, 2024. REUTERS/Belinda Jiao
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2024/Jul/05/images/ads/current/debbiesfloral_lda_052824.png)
Reform only won four seats so far, but it picked up more than 4
million votes - around 14% of the total ballot.
The performance of Reform UK scared many Conservatives, with leader
Farage - a seasoned campaigner - promising to hound the Conservative
Party and become the main voice of opposition.
His success might spur Conservative grassroots members into pushing
for a more populist radical right strategy to restore its fortunes -
something that the party's more centrist wing finds unpalatable.
Several Conservatives who spoke to Reuters said the grassroots
membership felt increasingly marginalised since Sunak's appointment
in 2022 without their votes, and want the party to reclaim what they
see as its traditional values of a small state and free markets.
Comparing the situation to 1997, when it had to rebuild after Labour
swept away 18 years of Conservative government, adviser Botting said
the party's future depended on where the energy, ideas and finance
needed to reset it came from.
"When, or if, the party decides what and who it is for, rather than
against, we will know whether the party has a future," said Botting,
a coach to hundreds of Conservative candidates over many years.
HOLLOWED OUT
It's a far cry from 2010 when Cameron ended the dominance of
so-called 'new Labour' under former prime ministers Tony Blair and
Gordon Brown, which had governed for 13 years.
Despite winning three more elections, the Conservative Party become
increasingly unmanageable, buffeted by ructions and rancour stemming
from the vote to leave the European Union.
The Conservatives have had four prime ministers since Cameron, three
brought down by their own party, including one - Liz Truss - who
lasted just over 40 days in power. Truss lost her seat in parliament
in Thursday's vote.
Almost all of those interviewed agree the party has sunk so low that
it may struggle to mount a strong electoral challenge at the end of
Labour's scheduled five-year term.
The party has become increasingly hollowed out - more than 70
lawmakers stood down before the election, including former prime
minister Theresa May and several other ministers. Dozens of advisers
and researchers jumped ship to look for new jobs, and 12 senior
ministers lost their seats at the election, a record number.
Some Conservatives doubt the party will be able to run an effective
opposition for some time.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2024/Jul/05/images/ads/current/ldn_booksda_CHASSKAREN_010924.png)
"What you'll be left with is a very small, very inexperienced ...
Conservative parliamentary party," the Conservative lawmaker, who
stood down at the election, said.
"It basically means that for a couple of years, at least, the Labour
Party will have a free run. We're not going to be any opposition."
While election results show it will have a vocal wing on the right
of the party, the party still has a solid centre.
The lawmaker said the Conservatives had to change, acknowledging
that the party's centre and right wing had failed to function in
tandem for the last seven or eight years.
"We have to acknowledge that the current state of affairs is
unsustainable," the lawmaker, on the right of the party, said.
Others think that with numbers reduced, the parliamentary party
might try to unite in Westminster, with Botting saying the party
might "get bigger together rather than squabble about the 'left' or
the 'right'".
Ryan Shorthouse, chair of the independent centre-right think tank
Bright Blue, said the party had arrived at "an electoral and
economic dead end".
"There's going to be a big battle of ideas within and around the
Conservative Party," said Shorthouse, whose think tank advocates for
centre-right policies but is not affiliated to the Conservative
Party.
His organisation is undertaking a strategic review to position
itself as a cross-party organization able to influence the Labour
government too, Shorthouse said.
"We want to ... basically forge a new centre-right."
(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper; Editing by Kate Holton and Daniel
Flynn)
[© 2024 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]This material
may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |