Three hopefuls are left in the race to become leader of the Conservatives, a race set to shape the future direction of Britain’s once dominant party.
The contest to replace former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will run until Nov. 2, after Conservative members cast the final ballots for a new leader, charged with turning around the fortunes of a party decimated in a July election by Labour.
Below are the main policies for the remaining contenders:
JAMES CLEVERLY
A former interior and foreign minister, Cleverly has boosted his credentials as the Conservatives’ “best communicator”, using a well-received speech at last week’s party conference to argue only he can unite the right of the party with its more moderate wing and “sell the benefits of conservatism with a smile”.
“Now is not the time for an apprentice,” the 55-year-old former army reserve officer told the conference. “I’m not doing this because I want to be something, I’m doing this because I want to do something. Renew, yes. Rebuild, yes. To deliver for our party first, yes. But then for our country.”
He has sought to use his record in the interior ministry to show he can take action on immigration, saying he would resurrect the previous Conservative government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. He has also said as foreign minister he stood up to Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s foreign minister.
In what he described as an “unstable world”, he has also pledged to increase defence spending to 3% of GDP.
ROBERT JENRICK
Jenrick raised his profile when he quit as an immigration minister under Sunak over what he called the “fatally flawed” Rwanda plan to send asylum seekers to the African nation. Then, he said it was not robust enough.
Jenrick, 42, has undergone a transformation from being a solid centrist of the party to moving towards the right with his strong criticism of immigration policies – a shift which has prompted some in the party to question his motives.
He says the only way to tackle rising levels of immigration is to set a cap on legal migration in the tens of thousands and to detain and remove within days to a safe third country such as Rwanda those migrants who enter the country illegally.
He also advocates for Britain to leave the European Convention of Human Rights, a treaty agreed by almost every European nation, to help tackle migration.
“If I am your leader, the pressure group for Britain’s hard working majority will be us, the Conservative Party,” he told the party’s conference last week, referring repeatedly to his “cast in iron” conservative principles. “If I am your leader that is what together we will build, a new Conservative Party.”
KEMI BADENOCH
Badenoch, a 44-year-old former trade minister, has positioned herself as an outspoken darling of not just the right-wing of the party but of younger lawmakers, promising to be “something different”, a challenging voice in what she describes as a broken government system.
Criticised by some, yet adored by others, for her outspoken views on Brexit and on what she calls “identity politics”, Badenoch says she wants the party to return to “authentic Conservatism” and stop “talking right, governing left”.
At last week’s party conference, she said one of her best qualities was “honesty”. But her unapologetic stances, such as describing of maternity pay as “excessive”, have prompted criticism. Then she said her comments were “misrepresented”.
Badenoch was also criticised after she said up to 10% of civil servants were so bad they should be in prison — the civil servants’ union accused her of a “below the belt” attack.
In her conference speeches, when she drew upon her upbringing in Nigeria and her job at McDonalds to support her studies, she said: “If I become leader, we will immediately begin a once in a generation undertaking … A comprehensive plan to reprogramme the British state, to reboot the British economy, a new blueprint for the great machine of our country.” (This story has been refiled to remove details on Tom Tugendhat)
(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper and Alistair Smout）
