Much is unclear about the future fortunes of the poll-plunging Conservative Party, but its conference in Manchester at least made its political direction clearer: the party this week shifted further to the right.
Party leader Kemi Badenoch and her front bench have announced a barrage of policies designed to chase Nigel Farage’s Reform UK down a right-wing alley, with promises to junk human rights law, slash public spending and abandon net zero targets.
But will it be Badenoch who gets to sell all of this to voters in the next electoral cycle, or could it be her current and erstwhile (and perhaps future) leadership rival, the ever more hard right-leaning shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick?
Tory members this week were able to compare them side by side.
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Jenrick walked into the conference with an image akin to the Andy Burnham of the Tories: content to be seen as politically distinct from his party leader, of questionable loyalty, and clearly on manoeuvres.
Yet perhaps mindful of how Burnham’s plan to destabilise Labour’s Keir Starmer went down at that party’s conference last week, just up the M62 in Liverpool, this week in Manchester Jenrick was careful to tone down his plotting and not seem too disloyal.
“I get on well with Kemi, we have lots of banter,” he said at one fringe event. Not many in the room were buying it, especially when Jenrick seemed to suggest she should lead the party into the next election.
Jenrick gave his big conference speech in the main hall on Tuesday, in which he played up his anti-migration credentials and even floated the idea of sacking more than 30 “activist” judges whom he said were too pro-immigrant. His audience lapped it up.
Jenrick’s enemies – presumably external ones – tried to endanger him on his big day by leaking to the Guardian an audio recording from six months ago of him complaining about a multiracial part of Birmingham, where he hadn’t seen “another white face”.
Yet if they intended to damage him, it probably had the opposite effect. Jenrick doubled down on his comments to say he was only concerned about a lack of integration, while Badenoch, a black woman, chose to back him against allegations of racism.
Jenrick had basically kept a truce with her during the conference, so perhaps she felt obliged to do the same.
Meanwhile, Badenoch gives her second big speech at the close of conference at about 11am on Wednesday, a day after 20 of her councillors defected to Reform.
She has called for Tory unity, yet done so while simultaneously alienating an entire wing of her party: the centrist so-called Tory “wets” who once made up the party’s One Nation caucus when such a thing existed (the faction was ostensibly scrapped last year).
Badenoch this week confirmed that Tories, were they to win back power, would pull Britain out of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), long a demand of Jenrick and his right-wing ilk. They argue that the ECHR prevents Britain from controlling its borders.
In times past, many wets would have been squeamish about such a move. Their mode of thinking was always allowed a place to reside within the party.
Yet Badenoch went further and said Tory MPs would not be allowed to run for re-election unless they signed up to the policy. She basically told One Nation-types to suck it up on ECHR or quit.
With rivals circling, Badenoch needs more friends in the party. Yet with frowns to the left of her and Jenrick to the right, there she is: stuck in the middle with who?
