Kemi Badenoch’s victory in the Conservative party leadership election was hardly a landslide. She secured only one-third of MPs’ support in the final round, just one vote ahead of her rival Robert Jenrick. Her share of the membership vote in the final round is also the lowest ever for a winner under the current system, in which a ballot among MPs is followed by a membership vote.
Conservative MPs are evenly split between MPs on the right of the party – supporting Badenoch, Jenrick and Priti Patel – and the centre of the party – those supporting James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat and Mel Stride.
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The centrists scuppered their chances of getting one of their candidates through to the final round when Cleverly supporters engaged in uncoordinated tactical voting to keep out the stronger rightwing candidate. This backfired spectacularly and simply served to boost both of Cleverly’s rivals’ support levels at the expense of his own.
I have been collecting information on public declarations by MPs to find out how support for the final two candidates was split. That has been a difficult exercise since MPs have been less forthcoming about who they were supporting in this contest compared with previous contests. By the time the membership ballot closed, just 47.5% of MPs disclosed who they were supporting, with 30 MPs backing Badenoch and 27 Jenrick.
In terms of demographics, Badenoch attracted a greater proportion of female and ethnic minority MPs (27% and 20% of her support respectively, compared with 22% and 7% for Jenrick). Of the five LGBT Tory MPs, just one made a public declaration of support, and it was for Badenoch.
There is also a clear experience divide. MPs from the new 2024 cohort make up just 7% of Badenoch’s support compared with 26% of Jenrick’s. MPs who served in an opposition position and therefore have more experience, make up 80% of Badenoch’s public supporters, compared with just 44% on the Jenrick side.
We also see some interesting divides from previous leadership elections (note that I’ve excluded the new cohort of MPs from this part of the analysis).
Half of Jenrick’s support base backed Liz Truss in 2022, compared with 32% of Badenoch’s base – and the figures are basically reversed for support for Sunak. Funnily enough, of the eight MPs who publicly backed Badenoch in 2022, four supported her again in 2024 while the other four backed Jenrick.
In the second of 2022’s leadership contests, 61% of Badenoch’s supporters backed Sunak compared with just 35% for Jenrick. Notably, none of the ten MPs who backed Boris Johnson publicly endorsed Badenoch this time around, compared with five who backed Jenrick.
Free marketeers v one nationers
We can also look at the relationship between affiliation with Conservative-aligned groups and candidate support. MPs associated with one nation groups (Bright Blue, One Nation Conservatives, and the Tory Reform Group) were evenly distributed across both camps. These MPs make up 45% of the total Parliamentary Conservative Party (PCP), and totalled 46% of Badenoch’s support and 45% of Jenrick’s.
Jenrick, however, did much better among the culturally conservative Common Sense Group (20% to Badenoch’s 4%) and the Eurosceptic European Research Group (40% of his support base, compared with 25% of Badenoch’s – although the difference in raw numbers is just one MP). We also see the hawkish China Research Group of MPs lean towards Jenrick – despite making up 14% of the PCP they comprise 30% of Jenrick’s support versus 11% of Badenoch’s.
On the economic dimension, Badenoch won a greater proportion of the relatively small free market MPs (those affiliated with the Institute of Economic Affairs’ Free Market Forum or Conservatives for Canzuk, which wants a post-Brexit realignment of foreign affairs towards Canada, Australia and New Zealand) – 11% v 5% for Jenrick.
MPs who support levelling up (those affiliated with Blue Collar Conservatism, Onward’s Levelling Up Taskforce, and the Northern Research Group) made up 45% of Jenrick’s base. Although they only made up 36% of Badenoch’s support base, she actually won a greater number of MPs from this group (ten against nine).
Taken together, then, some interesting themes emerge. First, Badenoch was the favourite of established MPs compared with Jenrick, who won the backing of new MPs. This is a good position for the new leader to be in, given that new MPs will be more eager to climb the opposition ranks and thus more likely to show loyalty to the new leader rather than rebel. Having experienced MPs on-side will help deliver stability to her shadow cabinet.
Second, despite the whole contest being pitched as a battle between the right and centre of the party, MPs affiliated with the one nation wing were evenly spread among the final two candidates. They did not decide to abstain, which would have sent a powerful message to whoever became the future leader.
Even in the fourth round, when a centrist candidate – Cleverly – was available, one nation MPs who publicly declared for a candidate made up half of Badenoch’s support, 39% of Jenrick’s and just 33% of Cleverly’s. This suggests the one nation cohort within the party is more eclectic than they are perhaps presented in commentary. And we can feel reasonably sure that they weren’t part of the failed tactical vote because they publicly declared their position.
So, while Badenoch is in a relatively strong position, there are certain groups she may wish to offer an olive branch to for the sake of party unity. They include new MPs, cultural conservatives, China hawks and those who backed Johnson in 2022.
David Jeffery does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
