Can the Conservative Party 'end the squabbling' and win again?

Rishi Sunak told the Conservative Party to "end the division, the backbiting, the squabbling" in his final speech as leader last week, as he urged Tories to unite behind whoever wins the race to replace him.

Speaking at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, Sunak told delegates that they "mustn't nurse old grudges but build new friendships" as he made a final plea for unity. 

The former prime minister warned the party that if the Conservatives were going to get back into power "then our new leader is going to need your support – and especially when the going gets tough". He urged his fellow Tories to "use this conference to look to the future and ensure that one of our four candidates is not just the next leader of our party but our next prime minister too".

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Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugendhat are the four contenders left in the Tory leadership contest. But each candidate has more to do if they are to convince their party that they are the person to lead the Conservatives out of opposition and back into power.

What did the commentators say?

This weekend's conference didn't feel like that of a party "that has just lost an election, let alone lost one so badly", said Rachel Cunliffe in The New Statesman. As "giant banners bearing the faces of the four leadership contenders" hung in the conference centre "like the flags of medieval knights", the mood was "cheerful, upbeat even".

These leadership hopefuls are "battling it out" to lead a party that currently has just 121 MPs. "So why the disconnect between vibe and reality?" The story the Tories are telling themselves is that "there is an easy – or at least a straightforward – way back from the wilderness", said Cunliffe. If they can "cut the infighting, come up with a solution on immigration and make the case for so-called Conservative values" then the country "will come to its senses, abandon Labour and return to the rightful party of government at the next election".  

That attitude is "far too complacent", said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, on Conservative Home. And alongside this seemingly "baked-in complacency" there are other concerns. First, the leadership contest coming immediately after the election has led to "hasty, ideologically-driven" proposals that are "destined to date badly, and often just plain wrong". Secondly, with Badenoch leading in the polls, the party seems set to elect a leader who believes the answer to failing public services "lies in a smaller state" – despite clear public demand for well-funded services – and who thinks voters "care far more about so-called 'cultural' issues than those very same polls suggest they do".

The Conservatives haven't fully grasped the scale of their loss or the threat posed by Reform, said Philip Johnston in The Telegraph. "Grief is said to have five phases, the first of which is denial." But the Tories "have not moved on to anger, let alone acceptance". Instead of remaining stuck in the past, the Conservative leadership candidates should embrace their spell in opposition as "an opportunity for much bigger thinking than we have seen so far".

What next?

The four leadership contenders have now all had their opportunity to make their pitch to the conference, but even among "political obsessives and Tory members" the speeches have failed to move the dial much, said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times. 

Perhaps the main reason, as one shadow cabinet minister suggested, is that "this isn't a party that is desperate to return to office", said Bush. "Yes, large numbers of Tories believe they will, thanks to Labour's mistakes, come back to office sooner rather than later." But the party lacks the "desperation to win" that drove their 2010 victory or Labour's in 2024.  And that "is the party's biggest problem".