A delegate checks his phone at the entrance to the annual Conservative Party Congress in Birmingham, England, on September 29, 2024.
HENRY NICHOLLS
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Add quotes from the candidates, mention PHOTOS
A demoralized British Conservative Party meets starting this Sunday in Birmingham with the aim of making progress in the search for a new leader, who will be appointed in November, after the electoral defeat it suffered in July.
After his failure at the polls on July 4, which ended fourteen years of Conservative governments, Rishi Sunak announced that he was leaving the leadership of the party, stripped of his position as prime minister, which passed into the hands of Labor’s Keir Starmer.
This annual conservative congress, which will last until Wednesday, constitutes the first step in the search for Sunak’s successor at the head of the party and will involve the four candidates for the position.
James Cleverly, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Interior under Sunak, and Tom Tugendhat, who held the Security portfolio in the last term, appear as more centrist candidates.
(FILES) Former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during the annual conference of the Conservative Party in Manchester, northern England, on October 4, 2024
JUSTIN TALLIS
For their part, Kemi Badenoch, of Nigerian parents, who was Minister of Women and Equality, and Robert Jenrick, who also held the Immigration portfolio in the Sunak government, have a more conservative profile.
On Sunday, Jenrick promised an “iron” brake on immigration. “The era of mass immigration must end. It is putting enormous pressure on housing, public services and social cohesion,” he told Sky News.
For his part, Badenoch declared that immigration is something the country needs to “get right.”
“Numbers matter (…) culture matters. If we want to have a well-integrated society, we must ensure that we have a shared culture and identity,” he told Sky News.
According to the English press, Jenrick has a slight advantage in the voting intentions of conservative deputies, who will decide who the two finalists are a week after the congress ends.
But the votes are announced to be close, in contrast to what happened in 2019, when the party elected Boris Johnson as leader, who started as the clear favorite.
“My impression is that there is no dominant candidate. This shows the problem they have in finding a strong, consensus leader with appeal to the general public,” said Argentine Ezequiel González Ocantos, professor of Political Science at the University from Oxford, to AFP.
Once the last two alternatives, chosen by the conservative deputies, are known, it will be the turn of the party members, who will vote until the end of October to designate the winner, whose name will be known on November 2.
The new leader will be in charge of bringing to the surface a party in the midst of a crisis, which voting intentions widely indicated as the loser of the elections almost three months ago.
In those elections, the Conservative Party only obtained 121 deputies of the 650 in the House of Commons, compared to 411 for the Labor Party.
The party led by Sunak lost 244 seats compared to the 2019 elections.
The economic crisis, some scandals, Brexit and their actions during Covid ended up taking their toll on the conservatives in the last term.
The party must now reflect on whether to opt for a right-wing or center movement.
The conservatives saw how the far-right Reform UK party took away many of their votes in the July elections, leaving them as the third most voted force, with more than four million votes.
“The dilemma facing the Conservative Party is whether to turn definitively towards a sharper right and thus be able to compete for the voter who opted for Reform UK, or to moderate and focus on disputing Labor’s story about who is competent to administer the country,” analyzed González Ocantos.
