ESTABLISHED 1828 Time to step up Ar e the Conservatives in a fit state to choose a new leader? The party that gathers in Birmingham next week needs to face a difficult fact: no matter how bad things are, they may become a lot worse. The party has lost, but not learned. They preach liberty while preparing to vote for a smoking ban. They are wedded to a net-zero agenda that forces up the cost of living. The difficulty is that all four candidates for the leadership are deeply compromised by the biggest mistakes of the past few years. On the issue of lockdown – perhaps the most damaging policy ever inflicted on this country by its government – none of them can say they did what they could to mitigate its damage. They ducked for cover instead. Today, Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat all say they want low taxes. None has come up with a plausible plan for lowering them. All say it’s time to stop promising what cannot be delivered, yet none demurs from the uncosted 2050 net-zero fantasy. Leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is being simplistically touted by some candidates as an automatic solution to the complicated problems of immigration – just as Brexit was. Welfare reform, the single most urgent issue facing the country, is absent from the debate. The learning process may take time. But by 2029 (the likely date of the next election), the most pressing questions will have changed. What matters now is whether the candidates are aware of the real risks that they face. The chief risk is Reform UK. Of the 10,000 registered to attend Tory conference just 4,000 are activists – comparable with the number who attended Nigel Farage’s conference in Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre. This matters. The Tories will lay on a real leadership battle next week, with as much intrigue and entertainment as members could reasonably ask for. Yet still they struggle to muster more members than a party that barely existed four years ago. Reform’s momentum grows. Nigel Farage can now call upon the Brexit coalition put together (and later lost) by Boris Johnson. Gary Smith, general secretary of the GMB trade union, pointed out during a Spectator fringe event at the Labour party conference this week that green initiatives may threaten many working-class jobs. ‘For every job you can point to that’s going to be created, I’ll point to ten that are The Red Wall is there for the taking. Farage knows as much and is campaigning to overtake the Tories being lost,’ he said. But where once Labour campaigned against de-industrialisation, Ed Miliband is acting as its handmaiden by saying it’s part of a great transition. The latest figures show that since 2015 the number of green jobs has gone up by just 124,000. What grounds are there to believe that five times more will be created in the next five years? As James Heale writes on page 10, the scenes at the Labour conference this week suggested that the party is now bought and sold by green lobbyists hungry for the subsidies on offer. With the Scunthorpe steelworks on the brink of closure, it won’t take long before Labour voters realise they’ve been abandoned by their party. It may be hard for the Tory candidates to admit what their predecessors did right but Johnson was very shrewd to target the voters Labour left behind. If Labour is the captive of doctrines as fashionable as their 28 2024 . . . free clothing, then the Red Wall is there for the taking. Farage knows as much and he is campaigning to overtake the Conservatives in upcoming elections. He may very well succeed. It is said, in some circles, that the Tories are really voting for a caretaker leader, since such a notoriously regicidal party is bound to decapitate itself again before the next general election. That would be a calamity. Next month Conservative voters will decide who will contest the next election and give them time to grow into the role. Fighting spirit, the right instincts, and the ability to command attention will be at a premium. Jenrick has shown impressive momentum in this campaign and his flagship policy is to back withdrawal from the ECHR. Polls suggest that Badenoch is the favourite of Tory members, but it’s quite possible that MPs will conspire to prevent her from reaching the final two. That would be a mistake. The summer has shown – and next week will likely confirm – that Badenoch and Jenrick represent the clearest choice in leadership styles. The public didn’t really turn towards Labour at the last election. Never in postwar history has a government won a smaller share of the vote. Ever since he won, it seems, Sir Keir Starmer has been busy alienating more people than he has been wooing. He now faces the scrutiny he was spared before the election – and so far, the results are not edifying. His lack of ideas is obvious and public dismay can be seen in the polls. The Tories do not, yet, have an agenda for recovery. That should come in time. First, however, the party needs to choose the leader most able to fight and to learn and to recognise that the big opportunity is the number of votes to be won on both the right and left. 3