Tory leadership candidates make pitch to members ahead of party conference

The first conference since their election defeat in July begins in Birmingham on Sunday – and Robert Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat, Kemi Badenoch and James Cleverly will be vying for support in the contest.

Candidates have touched on subjects from tax to immigration and the party’s future in a series of interviews and op-eds.

Ahead of several days of events, opening the conference in Sunday afternoon, the interim chair of the Tories, Richard Fuller, will tell the membership that he is “profoundly sorry” for the election loss.

The leadership candidates hoping to succeed Rishi Sunak will all have an opportunity to address the conference – which will run until Wednesday – and their campaigns will be lobbying MPs before parliamentarians pick the final two on October 10.

Members will choose between those two, with the result declared on November 2.

Immigration has so far featured heavily in the campaign, and in a piece in the Sunday Telegraph Ms Badenoch said that “if necessary” the UK should leave “international frameworks like the ECHR”.

She pledged to “end illegal migration by proper enforcement and inserting whatever deterrent is necessary into the system”.

Ms Badenoch said that such a move would be “part of a full plan, not just a throwaway promise to win a leadership contest”.

In the same piece Ms Badenoch called for an “integration strategy” and said that “we cannot be naïve and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnic hostilities at the border, or that all cultures are equally valid.”

She added: “I am struck for example, by the number of recent immigrants to the UK who hate Israel. That sentiment has no place here.”

Meanwhile, in The Sun on Sunday, Mr Jenrick said that the country needs “a tax system that rewards risk-takers” and should “take advantage of our Brexit freedoms and change VAT thresholds” for small businesses”.

He believes that “we should increase the thresholds to £100,000, as recommended by the Federation of Small Businesses, which would allow tens of thousands of businesses to have an additional untaxed turnover of £10,000.”

The Conservatives secured 121 seats at the general election in the summer, down hundred seats on their results in 2019.

Writing in the Telegraph, Mr Tugendhat said that the party were “rejected at the ballot box” and people want “leadership that puts the country first.”

Mr Tugendhat has said that the conference offers the party “a chance to change course”.

In a piece for the Telegraph released on Saturday afternoon, he said that the gathering is “an opportunity to rebuild our party – not as a vehicle of opposition, but as a future government”.

Interim chair Mr Fuller will tell delegates in Birmingham that the parliamentary party “needs to learn and has to change” when he makes his speech to conference on Sunday.

Mr Fuller is expected to say: “I am profoundly sorry to you, the members of the Conservative Party.

“To our activists. To our current and former councillors, police and crime commissioners and mayors who found their strong local records of service were dominated by negative national headlines.

“To Conservative voters and to the country at large for the consequence: a reckless, ideological socialist government with a huge majority based on a paltry share of the electorate.

“I am deeply sorry.”

As well as pledging that the parliamentary party “will change”, Mr Fuller is also expected to touch on the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK, who both took seats from the Tories at the general election.

“The Liberal Democrats have already said they will cosy up to Labour whenever they can,” he will say.

“And what of Reform? Well, we gave them oxygen. We gave them space. We will take both back.”