The Conservatives gather for their annual conference next week at a critical juncture. The main attraction in Birmingham is a parade of candidates to replace Rishi Sunak as leader, but the contest raises deeper questions about the future of a party that has lost its way. The Tories have been beaten before but never as savagely as they were in July, when voters evicted all but a rump of just 121 Conservative MPs from parliament.
From that pool there emerged six leadership contenders, subsequently whittled down to four – Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugendhat – who will attempt to woo audiences in Birmingham. Then MPs will halve the field, and the final two will go to a ballot of party members. A different mechanism operates in Scotland, where a new leader, Russell Findlay, was installed on Friday after a ballot in which just 4,155 votes were cast overall.
