Criticisms of the extreme policies put forward by the candidates for Conservative leadership by Polly Toynbee (Call this a party conference? It’s more like a weird Tory festival of mass delusion, 1 October), your editorial (30 September) and Zoe Williams (Why did Kemi Badenoch attack maternity pay? Ask the Tory members …, 30 September) ignore the fact that the contest is essentially a primary, and subject to the same conditions as primaries in US elections. To be successful, you must appeal to the membership, whose vote will determine whether your candidacy will go forward.
This necessarily involves pretending to be more one-sided than you really are. If you succeed, you have to negotiate an awkward transition to policies that appeal to the wider electorate. The key factor is the nature of the primary electorate. In the case of the Tories, this is their membership, whose opinions are famously skewed in comparison with the rest of us.
