Why this Tory beauty pageant shouldn’t bet on a David Cameron-style turnaround

Good morning from Birmingham. All four leadership contenders will address the party faithful today, in what is the last big chance any of the candidates have to change the dynamic of the race. Some thoughts on that below.

Beyond the hall

There are several reasons why the Conservative party leadership election is taking such a long time. One is pure spite: some Tory MPs felt that Rishi Sunak had timed the election to get the party out of his hair before the end of the summer and were disinclined to help him. Another is that the last time the Conservatives had a long leadership election, it gave the time and the space for David Cameron to emerge.

The whole shape of this conference has been based around recreating that moment in 2005, when Cameron turned the contest on its head with a brilliant speech. That’s the lightning in a bottle that the various Q&As and hustings hosted by any number of think-tanks are trying to capture.

Thus far, that hasn’t happened. This contest remains pretty much in the same place it was at the start of the week: Robert Jenrick in the box seat, with Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat all fighting it out to make it to the members’ round of the contest (Tory MPs vote next week to narrow it down to a final two). It is very, very, very far down the list of important repercussions of the war in the Middle East, but one consequence of Iran’s attack on Israel is that there is, I think, very little prospect that today’s speeches will register at all outside the conference hall.

Even among political obsessives and Tory members, I just don’t think the addresses are going to get the attention and the coverage it would need to change this contest, regardless of how terrific the execution may be. There are lots of reasons for that. One is that Cameron was an incredibly talented political performer and there aren’t many politicians who could do what he did in that fateful speech in 2005. But the other, as one shadow cabinet minister put it to me last night, is that the Conservative party is not looking for a Cameron, not really. This isn’t a party that is desperate to return to office.

Yes, large numbers of Tories believe they will, thanks to Labour’s mistakes, come back to office sooner rather than later. But it does not have the same desperation to win that characterised the Tory party in 2010 or Labour in 2024. And that, as much as anything the candidates might fail to do today, is the party’s biggest problem.

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Now try this

I had a lovely dinner at Asha’s last night, it’s well worth a visit. (There is also a sister restaurant in Manchester.)

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