Jenrick and Badenoch Enter Final Race for Conservative Leader

(Left) Kemi Badenoch delivering a speech during the Conservative Party Conference at the International Convention Centre in Birmingham, England, on Oct. 2, 2024. (Right) Robert Jenrick delivering a speech during the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham, England, on Oct. 1, 2024. Jacob King/PA Wire

Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch will face off in a ballot to decide who will be the next Conservative leader, after James Cleverly was eliminated from the race.

After the final parliamentary party vote on Wednesday, Badenoch came in first place, winning 42 votes, followed by Jenrick with 41, and Cleverly coming in last with 37 votes.

Cleverly said after the results were announced that he was grateful for the support he had received from his colleagues, party members, and the public.

“Sadly it wasn’t to be. We are all Conservatives, and it’s important the Conservative Party unites to take on this catastrophic Labour government,” he wrote on social media platform X.

The MP for Braintree had briefly taken the lead on Tuesday, after overtaking Jenrick in the vote which took Tom Tugendhat out of the race. Cleverly had been the bookmakers’ favourite to win after Tuesday’s round of voting.

It is now up to the party membership to choose who will be the next leader of the party.

The online ballot opens on Oct. 10 and closes on the 31, and the winner will be announced on Nov. 2.

Badenoch’s Reboot

Following the results of the poll, a spokesman for Badenoch’s campaign said: “We’re delighted that Kemi has topped the vote. As the members’ choice throughout, she is the best placed to unite the parliamentary party and the Conservative Party membership.

“Kemi is now looking forward to taking her campaign for renewal around the country and making the case for politics with principles.”

Badenoch had made her case as prospective party leader at last week’s Conservative conference. The former business and trade secretary called for a “reboot” of the British state, reconsidering every aspect of it, including the nation’s international agreements, the Human Rights Act, the Equality Act, and the Civil Service.

Badenoch said the reboot was needed because the government relied on economic models that did not work. She added that ministerial decisions have become unenforceable, because they are being “endlessly challenged in the courts,” citing instances where foreign child abusers could not be deported because of human rights laws.

She also warned against the resurgence of socialist ideas and identity politics, adding that people had become afraid to defend their beliefs, and it was up to the Conservative Party “to defend them, champion them, and give them a party they can be proud of.”

Tackling the Big Issues

Former frontrunner Jenrick had said hours before Wednesday’s vote in a post on X that he stood for “serious, professional, competent leadership focussed on the biggest issues facing our country.”

The former immigration minister set out several of his policies at the conference, including his vision for a “new” Conservative Party which could beat Labour at the polls in five years’ time, referring to how the Tories reinvented themselves in the 1970s and, under Margaret Thatcher, ousted the Labour government in the 1979 election.

Jenrick promised to get Britain building homes and infrastructure again, said he was opposed to extreme net zero policies, and backed cutting the foreign aid budget and putting that money into defence. He also called for “building a small state that actually works—not a big state that fails.”

(Left to right) Tory leadership candidates, Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly, and Tom Tugendhat, stand together on stage after delivering their speeches during the Conservative Party Conference at the International Convention Centre in Birmingham, England, on Oct. 2, 2024. Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

The MP for Newark was also the only candidate out of the final four to say the UK should leave the European Convention on Human Rights and replace the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights, saying during his conference speech that these institutions “are creating an arsenal of laws by which illegal entrants frustrate their removal.”

PA Media contributed to this report.