A Tory beauty parade kicked off today as would-be leaders make their pitches to activists.
Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat are laying out their cases at the party’s annual conference in Birmingham.
Ms Badenoch and Mr Jenrick are the favourites to take the crown from Rishi Sunak after his humiliating defeat at the election.
And they have both been focusing their fire on immigration – with Ms Badenoch claiming too many people with anti-Israel views have been allowed to migrate to Britain. She insisted that ‘not all cultures are equal’.
‘When you go to other countries they demand that you believe in it,’ she told Sky News.
Her combative stance was underlined in a separate interview with the BBC, where she accused Laura Kuenssberg of ‘trying to get me to say’ that the problem was Muslims coming to the UK.
Ms Badenoch also said she would ‘congratulate’ Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu on strikes that killed the Hezbollah leadership in Beirut, and the country was showing ‘moral clarity’ in taking out ‘terrorists’.
And she warned critics such as Doctor Who star David Tennant – with whom she rowed about trans rights: ‘If you swing at me I will punch back.’
Describing her appeal to voters, Ms Badenoch said: ‘I am something that is just different and unique.’
Kemi Badenoch (pictured) and Mr Jenrick are the favourites to take the crown from Rishi Sunak after his humiliating defeat at the election
Ms Badenoch and rival Robert Jenrick were both interviewed on the BBC this morning
Presenter Laura Kuenssberg tossed a coin on air to decide who was questioned first
Mr Jenrick arriving for the Tory conference in Birmingham last night
Ahead of several days of events, the interim chair of the Tories, Richard Fuller will tell the membership this afternoon that he is ‘profoundly sorry’ for the election loss.
The candidates will all have an opportunity to address the conference on Wednesday before parliamentarians pick the final two on October 10.
Members will choose between those two, with the result declared on November 2 – although there is speculation that could be brought forward so the new leader can respond to the Budget on October 30.
Mr Sunak will not stick around to see the conference develop – as he is expected to leave this evening.
In a piece in the Sunday Telegraph Ms Badenoch said that ‘if necessary’ the UK should leave ‘international frameworks like the ECHR’.
She pledged to ‘end illegal migration by proper enforcement and inserting whatever deterrent is necessary into the system’.
Ms Badenoch said that such a move would be ‘part of a full plan, not just a throwaway promise to win a leadership contest’.
In the same piece Ms Badenoch called for an ‘integration strategy’ and said that ‘we cannot be naïve and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnic hostilities at the border, or that all cultures are equally valid.’
She added: ‘I am struck for example, by the number of recent immigrants to the UK who hate Israel. That sentiment has no place here.’
Press on Sky New why she had not explictly said Muslim immigrants, Ms Badenoch insisted: ‘Because it is not all Muslim immigrants. And this is what I don’t do, I am very careful when I speak.’
She said: ‘There are some, those who buy into Islamist ideology, political Islam, they do not like Israel and we need to be able to distinguish between the two. That is why I don’t just use a word that brings so many people into the group.’
Ms Badenoch also denied she deliberately sought out public spats, such as with actor David Tennant over trans rights.
‘What is interesting about all those three people is there I was being nice, minding my own business, and then they came after me,’ she said.
The North West Essex MP added: ‘Why is it that people worry about someone who talks back? They don’t like it when women talk back, they don’t like it when politicians talk back.
‘I will talk back, I will not stand there and let people punch me. If you swing at me I will swing back but I don’t look for fights.’
Asked if her childhood years in Nigeria meant she was ‘too Nigerian’ for British politics, Ms Badenoch replied: ‘I doubt that. Nigerians tell me that I am too British. I am just Kemi, really. I am something that is just different and unique and that is why I stand out in this contest.’
Meanwhile, in The Sun on Sunday, Mr Jenrick said that the country needs ‘a tax system that rewards risk-takers’ and should ‘take advantage of our Brexit freedoms and change VAT thresholds’ for small businesses’.
He believes that ‘we should increase the thresholds to £100,000, as recommended by the Federation of Small Businesses, which would allow tens of thousands of businesses to have an additional untaxed turnover of £10,000.’
The Conservatives secured 121 seats at the general election in the summer, down hundreds of seats on Boris Johnson’s landslide in 2019.
Writing in the Telegraph, Mr Tugendhat said that the party were ‘rejected at the ballot box’ and people want ‘leadership that puts the country first.’
Mr Tugendhat has said that the conference offers the party ‘a chance to change course’.
In a piece for the Telegraph released on Saturday afternoon, he said that the gathering is ‘an opportunity to rebuild our party – not as a vehicle of opposition, but as a future government’.
Interim chair Mr Fuller will tell delegates in Birmingham that the parliamentary party ‘needs to learn and has to change’ when he makes his speech to conference on Sunday.
Mr Fuller is expected to say: ‘I am profoundly sorry to you, the members of the Conservative Party.
‘To our activists. To our current and former councillors, police and crime commissioners and mayors who found their strong local records of service were dominated by negative national headlines.
‘To Conservative voters and to the country at large for the consequence: a reckless, ideological socialist government with a huge majority based on a paltry share of the electorate.
‘I am deeply sorry.’
Tom Tugendhat (pictured arriving last night) is one of the other contenders
Shadow home secretary James Cleverly arriving at conference with his wife last night
Ms Badenoch was greeted
As well as pledging that the parliamentary party ‘will change’, Mr Fuller is also expected to touch on the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK, who both took seats from the Tories at the general election.
‘The Liberal Democrats have already said they will cosy up to Labour whenever they can,’ he will say.
‘And what of Reform? Well, we gave them oxygen. We gave them space. We will take both back.’
