What do Tory party members want?

The former home secretary Priti Patel has been knocked out of the Conservative leadership contest in the first round of voting by Tory MPs.

Polling continues in the coming weeks until the field is reduced to two candidates, leaving party members to pick one of them to be the new leader. After a heavy defeat at the general election, understanding what members want next for the party is key to the hopefuls' chances. But that's easier said than done. "I don't think Tory members themselves know what they want", said Ben Walker in The New Statesman.

What did the commentators say?

Tory members are craving a display of "competence", said Walker, so "they don’t want to see noise over the riots" or "party politicking" but rather "someone to rise above that". There has been a "clear change of perspective" since the party's defeat: they want "someone who can steady the party" but "that doesn’t mean they don't want to be self-indulgent – and choose candidates that reflect their own values and cultural politics".

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The challenge is that the leadership race "requires appealing to three tribes", wrote Dr Patrick English, Director of Political Analytics at YouGov, for Conservative Home: their fellow MPs, prospective Tory voters and the party members. "Herein lies the problem", he added, "these audiences are very different".

Recent polling data "sheds light on some extremely tricky mismatches" in public and membership priorities, with the seeming demands from Conservative party members to "shift their party to the right and to appeal to Reform UK voters" being "at odds" with the public mood. So a "lurch to the right" may not be particularly helpful in building public support.

The sense that feeling among party members is more "nuanced" than previously thought was born out by a poll that found only a minority favour Britain leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), said Gordon Rayner, associate editor of The Telegraph.

Only 33% of 1,500 Tory members surveyed said it should be party policy to leave the ECHR, with 29% saying Britain's membership should be reformed and 22% saying the country should remain in an unreformed ECHR.

In recent years, party members have "tended to pick the more right-wing candidate of the final two", said Sam Francis, political reporter of the BBC. For instance, in the first of two leadership elections of 2022, Rishi Sunak "consistently won more support" from MPs than Liz Truss, during each round, before party members "had their say".

While Badenoch "commanded the support of a number of high profile MPs" at her launch, wrote Beth Rigby for Sky News, Cleverly's first event was "instead was filled with party members", with activists saying his "undying loyalty to the party during difficult times" had "won plenty of support with the grassroots".

But a survey of Tory members will "make happy reading for Team Kemi", said Guido Fawkes, as she "pips the polls" at 34%, twice as many as Jenrick, who trails second at 18%. She also "beats all other candidates at a head-to-head contest".

How might Badenoch's opponents turn things around? Rigby thinks that playing to the various membership factions might be a wise move, whichever path the leader hopes to take in the longer term. The hopefuls "may want to take a page out of Starmer's playbook", she wrote, and note how he "engaged with the left during the leadership race", only to "reset in the centre group".

What next?

After Patel's elimination, the five remaining candidates will be "whittled down to four" by Conservative MPs in a further vote next week, said Henry Zeffman, chief political correspondent for the BBC.

Those four will march forward to the party conference, where three days will be "devoted heavily" to "multiple appearances" by the leadership contenders, said Politico's London Playbook. They will be "put through their paces repeatedly" in front of members, including a "fireside chat", a Q&A session and a speech from the main podium.

After the conference, Conservative MPs will again narrow the field, this time to two, before members have the final say. The winner will be announced on 2 November.

Meanwhile, a debate is already underway over how much power party members should wield in the future. Following her elimination, Patel called for party members to have "a greater role in the running our party" in a statement on X.

But, writing in The Times, former leader William Hague said this "will not be the change for which the wider electorate is looking", because voters have a "justified sense" that the Tories were "unable to govern well because of their internal politics".