Tory leadership hopefuls invoked their political idols Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in final speeches before the contest is whittled down to two.
While there was no love lost for Sir Keir Starmer – with jokes about the freebies row and accusations of managed decline – one contender also channelled his predecessor Sir Tony Blair with a pitch for a “New Conservative Party”.
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The comments from Robert Jenrick echo the former prime minister’s “New Labour” philosophy that brought Labour back from the brink to win them three elections after 18 years in opposition.
The Tories are hoping to eventually replicate that success after their worst-ever defeat at the ballot box in July.
Mr Jenrick is in the running for the top spot alongside Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly and Kemi Badenoch.
The speeches came on the final day of the Conservative conference in Birmingham, which has acted as a hustings for the four candidates to make their case to fellow MPs and party members, who will ultimately pick the winner.
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Former home secretary Mr Cleverly told the conference he “hadn’t planned to run for leader”, and apologised to delegates “on behalf of the Conservative parliamentary party who let you down”.
However, his central message was for the party to be more “enthusiastic” and give a sense of a better future to win back those who switched to Labour and other parties.
‘Let’s be more like Reagan’
Channelling his political idol, the former US President Ronald Reagan, he said: “Let’s be more like Reagan. Let’s be enthusiastic, relatable, positive, optimistic. Let’s be more normal.
“Let’s sell the benefits of conservatism with a smile, because if we do…we can see off the threat from Reform and the Lib Dems and win back Labour, and re-energise those Conservatives who stayed at home at the last general election, get them off the sofa to the ballot box and voting Conservative again.”
The speech was not without its swipes, however.
As well as attacks on Sir Keir Starmer and Reform leader Nigel Farage, who he said he would never do a deal with, Mr Cleverly made digs at the other candidates, in particular saying he didn’t “complain about immigration or walk away from the challenge” when he was in government.
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Mr Jenrick, who quit as Rishi Sunak’s immigration minister last year in protest over the failed Rwanda asylum policy, has made tackling the issue central to his pitch and says he wants to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to revive the scheme.
His speech made repeated references to a “new Conservative Party” under his leadership, with a five-point plan to reject mass migration, get rid of net zero, get Britain building, and provide a smaller state and a united country.
He too channelled a political idol, former prime minister Mrs Thatcher, saying the Tories need to offer reform similar to what she undertook after inheriting a Britain “broken in the 1970s” by a “stale Labour government”.
Badenoch: Time to tell the truth
Ms Badenoch, who has made a virtue out of being a straight-talker, repeated her central message that it is “time to tell the truth” and the public wants honest politicians.
The former business secretary said the July election defeat could “extinguish” the party if they do not learn the lessons, saying the result was because they stopped “acting like Conservatives” and embraced plans like net zero and oversaw higher taxes and greater immigration.
“We did not defend capitalism,” she said.
‘Conservative revolution needed’
Meanwhile former security minister Mr Tugendhat, from the moderate “one nation” wing of the party, spoke of the need for a “Conservative revolution”.
On migration, he said the solution was about “visas, not about foreign courts”, in an apparent swipe at his opponents who have been more outwardly hawkish on tackling the issue.
He said a migration cap, as promised by Mr Jenrick, “won’t work” because the UK has a skills shortage that relies on immigration – and that is something he wants to fix by funding more apprenticeships.
The contest will be whittled down to two next week in a vote by Tory MPs, then the membership will get the final say.
Up until the conference Mr Jenrick and Ms Badenoch, from the right of the party, were seen as the frontrunners, but the two have been embroiled in rows this week and polling for Sky News shows there is a path to victory for all candidates.
Mr Jenrick has come under pressure for claiming in a promotional video that UK special forces were “killing rather than capturing” terrorists, for fear of detainees being released under European human rights law.
Mr Tugendhat said the comments about the SAS were “wrong” and it is “upsetting” that the video had used footage of a soldier he served with in Afghanistan, who died soon after.
Ms Badenoch has come under criticism for claiming 10% of civil servants are so bad “they should be in jail” – comments she said were a joke, and for suggesting maternity pay is “excessive” – comments she said were “misrepresented”.
