Kemi Badenoch launched her Conservative leadership campaign on Monday with a pointed attack on Doctor Who actor David Tennant that provoked some ridicule online.
MPs were returning to Westminster after the summer break with the six Tory candidates seeking support ahead of the first round of voting in their leadership race on Wednesday.
At her formal launch in Westminster, Ms Badenoch lashed out at Labour and called for change in the Conservative Party after its demoralising defeat by Sir Keir Starmer in July.
The shadow communities secretary, the bookmakers’ favourite to replace Rishi Sunak, said her party has to “focus on renewal” to be ready to return to power.
Reflecting on where it went wrong under previous leaders, she said: “We talked right but governed left, sounding like Conservatives but acting like Labour. Government should do fewer things, but what it does, it should do with brilliance.”
Leadership rival James Cleverly, who won the endorsement of Tory heavy-hitter Grant Shapps, used his own speech on Monday to say “we must think and act like Conservatives again”, arguing for a smaller state and that he was “uniquely suited” to unite the party and country.
Showing she means to stay on the frontlines of the “culture wars”, Ms Badenoch’s launch video replayed a clip in which Tennant accepted a prize at the British LGBT Awards in June and urged the top Tory to “shut up”.
The former equalities minister says in the clip: “No, I will not shut up.
“When you have that type of cultural establishment trying to keep Conservatives down, you need someone like me who's not afraid of Doctor Who or whoever, and who is going to take the fight to them and not let them try and keep us down.
“That's not going to happen with me.”
The video ends with the Conservative reminding viewers of how to say her surname, to pronounce it ‘Bayd-e-noch’ rather than Bad-e-noch.
“There is no bad in my name - I just want people to be clear on that,” she says.
The video raised eyebrows on X (formerly Twitter), with several users querying why Ms Badenoch was taking on a popular actor rather than spelling out her policy goals to rebuild the Tories in opposition.
“We do not want fights with actors and grandstanding,” one said. “If you cannot be serious and actually listen to the concerns of voters and attempt not to make it all about you, then you should just drop out now.”
But Ms Badenoch defended her combative approach to politics, arguing at her launch that “people who say that all I did was culture wars were not paying attention”.
“I was doing my job. I was the equalities minister. I had to look after very, very tricky issues like race and gender – things that everybody ran away from,” she said, insisting that her despatch box attacks on Labour in the Commons showed how she would be “taking the fight to Keir Starmer” if elected as Tory leader.
The top Tories bidding to succeed Mr Sunak as party leader ramped up their campaigns to avoid getting knocked out of the contest within days.
Conservative MPs, who now number only 121 in Parliament after the party’s disastrous election loss in July, will vote on Wednesday to eliminate one of the six candidates from the leadership race.
A second vote will take place, if needed, the following Monday to reduce the number of contenders to four.
It is possible, though, that the MP getting the second lowest backing from MPs this Wednesday may withdraw from the contest which would mean there was no need for the Monday vote.
The build-up to the ballot has already seen major speeches by candidates Tom Tugendhat, Dame Priti Patel and Robert Jenrick in recent days.
Both Ms Badenoch and Mr Cleverly were making campaign speeches on Monday.
Ms Badenoch said: “We have to focus on renewal. The renewal of our party, our politics and our thinking.”
She added: “The British people are yearning for something better and this Labour government is not it.
“They have no ideas. At best they are re-announcing things we have already done.”
Mr Cleverly said the Tories “must get our act together” to present solutions to “an unstable world, global migration and a crisis of confidence in capitalism”.
The shadow home secretary argued for “family-first resilience” rather than looking to the state as the first port of call when a problem arises.
“We accept that the state has a primary duty to protect its people and its borders. But Conservatives must be honest about the trade-offs in doing these things properly,” he said.
“The state should focus on doing fewer things well, not everything badly.”
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Mr Cleverly also said he wanted to abolish stamp duty on all home purchases, calling it a “bad tax”.
The field of six candidates - which also includes Mel Stride - will be whittled down to four by the time of the Conservative conference in Birmingham at the end of the month.
After that, MPs will carry out further rounds of voting to select two final candidates for the Conservative members to choose between, with the result announced on November 2.
To get into the last four, a contender needs 24 votes from Tory MPs.
Mr Jenrick’s team are confident he has a clear path to gain the backing of 41 MPs to make the shortlist in Birmingham.
He has made 72 visits to meet local Tories across the country so far in his campaign, and his allies say he has the backing of 16 Tory MPs so far including the newly announced support of shadow justice secretary Edward Argar.
The former immigration minister is seeking to present himself as the most credible candidate to win back millions of voters who switch from the Tories to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
He backs withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights and replacing it with a British Bill of Rights.
Mr Jenrick, who resigned from Mr Sunak’s government over the failure to take a more hardline approach to reduce immigration, supports a tougher Rwanda policy and Parliament setting a cap on annual legal migration in the tens of thousands.
He believes that Reform needs to be taken on to create space to also seek to win back voters who deserted his party to the Liberal Democrats and Labour, in London and other regions, by showing it is competent and professional on the economy and improving public services.
