(Bloomberg) -- Former Home Secretary James Cleverly launched his bid to lead the UK Conservatives, urging his party to consign its divisions to the past in order to overturn Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s “loveless landslide.”
“Over the next Parliament, we must not descend into infighting, navel-gazing and the internecine maneuverings at Westminster that plagued us in government,” Cleverly wrote in Wednesday’s Telegraph newspaper. “In opposition we must be unified and disciplined.”
Cleverly — who also served as foreign secretary in government — is the first candidate to declare they’re running in a Tory leadership race that will run until early November. The bookmakers’ favorite to win the contest to succeed former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is former Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch. Other potential contenders include former Home Secretaries Priti Patel and Suella Braverman and former Home Office minister Robert Jenrick from the right of the party, and former security minister Tom Tugendhat from the center-right.
At stake is the political direction of a party that’s led UK governments for about two thirds of the past century. Some — such as Braverman — want the party to move rightwards to appeal to voters of Nigel Farage’s anti-immigrant Reform UK party. Others, including Cleverly, see a more centrist approach as being the key to electoral success.
“Sacrificing pragmatic government in the national interest on the altar of ideological purity is not Conservative,” Cleverly wrote — in what could be seen as a swipe against one-time favorite Braverman, who earlier this week told the same newspaper her party can “do better than being a collection of fanatical, irrelevant, centrist cranks.”
While Braverman said her party needed to pivot to win back support from Reform, which took 14% of the votes in the July 4 general election, Cleverly has in the past said his party should be a “broad church.”
“We are the natural home of the Reform voters who want tough action to control our borders,” he wrote. “We are the natural home of Liberal Democrat voters who care about their rural communities. And we are the natural home of the Labour voter who wants to see real economic growth, public services improve and their pay go further.”
Nominations for the leadership close mid-afternoon on July 29. Conservative Members of Parliament will then narrow the field down to four candidates in time for the party’s annual conference at the end of September, after which they will shortlist two politicians who will then be put to a vote of party members. The new leader is set to be announced on Nov. 2.
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