The next Conservative leader will be from the populist right of the party after Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick were selected as the final two candidates, with Tory MPs eliminating James Cleverly in a stunning turnaround.
In a result which left many Conservatives shocked, and some Labour and Lib Dem officials openly delighted, a final vote of Tory MPs saw Badenoch come first, just ahead of Jenrick, with Cleverly last.
Cleverly, the shadow home secretary and the last remaining candidate from the party’s centre, had topped the previous round of voting on Tuesday and was the favourite to win, including the final round among party members.
But the results, announced by Bob Blackman, chair of the party’s 1922 Committee of backbenchers, saw Cleverly lose support, going from 39 votes on Tuesday – just one away from the 40 needed to guarantee a spot – to 37.
Badenoch went from 30 votes on Tuesday to 42. Jenrick moved from 31 supporters to 41. The final decision will now be made in a ballot of Conservative party members, with the result announced on 2 November.
The result was met with dismay among some Tory MPs, many of whom are on the more moderate One Nation wing of the party yet are left with a choice between two rightwingers as a result of attempts at tactical voting. “We’ve just been too clever by half,” one said.
Another Tory MP said they were now getting messages from local members saying: “What the hell are you doing?”
Party insiders have said it was striking how many more moderate party members had engaged with the contest, adding further momentum to Cleverly’s bid.
Nadine Dorries, the Tory former cabinet minister, said on X: “MPs had one job. To be normal and vote for the person who is best placed to lead you. It really wasn’t hard.” During the party’s conference in Birmingham last week, Cleverly had urged party members to be “more normal”.
The latest twist in the contest saw immediate conjectures of plotting and vote-lending, including the notion that Cleverly’s team sought to keep Badenoch, initially seen as the favourite of party members, off the final ballot but badly miscalculated.
However, a source in Cleverly team said there was “absolutely no coordinated vote lending from our campaign at any point”. A source in Jenrick’s camp said the same.
Other MPs suggested that some supporters of Tugendhat, who was eliminated on Tuesday, assumed that fellow centrist Cleverly was guaranteed a spot in the last two and thus decided to back Badenoch due to their distaste at Jenrick’s pledge to pull the UK out of the European convention on human rights.
Whatever happens, it means the next opposition leader will be firmly on the right of party, with the main differences between Jenrick and Badenoch ones of emphasis. Jenrick has pushed policies around migration, while Badenoch has focused more on culture war issues and institutional reform.
Both have argued that they can unite the party, and Jenrick was long seen as a centrist. However, after he quit as immigration minister in Rishi Sunak’s government he has taken a more right-leaning and sometimes populist approach, promising to immediately pull the UK out of the ECHR if he become prime minister.
Jenrick has explicitly couched the issue of withdrawal in Brexit-style terms, calling it an issue of “leave or remain” and saying that he wants to “get migration done”.
Badenoch has taken a more nuanced approach to the issue. Speaking after Wednesday’s result, she told Sky News that focusing on the ECHR “shuts down the conversation we need to have with the entire country” about migration.
While Jenrick told Sky he could “absolutely” pledge a clean contest, his camp has already sought to highlight their opponent’s fondness for battles over culture war issues.
Tory members would, a source in Jenrick’s camp said, “face a choice between voting for a candidate with a serious plan and detailed policies or risking being drawn into endless rabbit holes, Twitter spats and distractions”.
After the result, Cleverly said on X: “Sadly it wasn’t to be. We are all Conservatives, and it’s important the Conservative party unites to take on this catastrophic Labour Government.”
But Labour characterised the Tory members’ task as “choosing between two of the architects of Tory failure”, emphasising the ministerial roles held by Badenoch, the shadow housing secretary, and Jenrick.
In private, cabinet ministers were gleeful. One told the Guardian: “After a few weeks off, it looks like Keir’s genie is back at work.” In a jokey reference to the government’s donations row, a Labour MP asked: “Does Tory leadership result need to be declared as a gift?”
The Liberal Democrats said: “If this were an interview process they would’ve put the job advert up again. The best the Conservatives can come up with is a failed former minister who’d vote for Donald Trump and a failed former minister who thinks maternity pay is excessive.”
Jenrick has said he would back Trump if he was in the US, while Badenoch’s comments about maternity pay were among a series of controversial comments she made during last week’s Conservative conference, which some believed might have affected her chances of success.
Throughout the contest, multiple Tory MPs said they were concerned that she might be a liability as leader, as she could be rude and abrasive. Before the election, she was accused of creating an intimidating atmosphere in the government department she used to run.
