Britain’s top pollster has warned that the Conservatives cannot win, whether Robert Jenrick or Kemi Badenoch ends up winning the Tory leadership contest.
Professor Sir John Curtice described the pair, battling it out in the last stage of the race to succeed Rishi Sunak, as “unknown quantities” who do not have what it takes to turn the party’s fortunes around.
“In short, despite their ideological stance, neither Ms Badenoch nor Mr Jenrick is necessarily well set to heal the electoral divide on the right,” he wrote in a damning article for The Independent.
Prof Curtice also said neither candidate has “an adequate understanding of why their party suffered its worst ever electoral result in July”, meaning they are unlikely to “take the steps needed for their party to regain voters’ trust”.
He pointed to ongoing rows at the top of the Conservative Party about whether it was too left wing in government, overseeing an expansion of the state and implementing policies to boost diversity and inclusion.
Prof Curtice said: “However, an examination of the timeline of the Conservatives’ standing in the polls during the last parliament reveals that the party’s precipitous fall from grace was not occasioned by a failure to be truly Conservative.”
The polling guru said Partygate and Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget were “stains on the party’s copybook” that contributed to its collapse.
And he said “no reversion to ‘true’ Conservative values” is going to undo the damage the Tories suffered as a result of the scandals.
His powerful intervention comes days after the more centrist James Cleverly was knocked out of the leadership race, laying the groundwork for the party to lurch rightwards under Mr Jenrick or Ms Badenoch.
The Tory Reform Group, on the left of the party, has refused to endorse either of the right-wing candidates, saying they have “used rhetoric and focused on issues which are far and away from the party at its best”.
Prof Curtice’s Independent article follows an interview with Tory grandee Damian Green, who told this paper that despite his preferred candidate Tom Tugendhat also being knocked out, members should back Ms Badenoch in the final vote.
Mr Green, who was Theresa May’s deputy prime minister, said: “Kemi clearly recognises the enormous task the party faces in making itself an effective governing machine again and in regaining the trust of the British people.
“This will not be done by lurching right or left chasing individual groups of voters, but by creating a positive vision of Conservatism around which the party can unite. I hope One Nation Conservatives can and will play a full role in this.”
Prof Curtice said Mr Cleverly was the most popular candidate with the public to take the leadership of the party.
And he warned that, while Ms Badenoch is well placed to win voters back from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, she also poses a risk of turning off one Tory voter for every Reform voter she wins back.
He added: “Still, as largely unknown quantities, maybe either Ms Badenoch or Mr Jenrick proves able to surprise us. They are both certainly going to have to reveal a wider range of political talents than they have so far.”
At the weekend, Mr Jenrick promised to appoint former business secretary Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg as chair of the Conservative Party if he wins the leadership race.
The former immigration minister said one of his first acts would be to hand the crucial role – responsible for Tory election campaigns – to Sir Jacob, who lost his seat in the July election.
Sir Jacob has endorsed Mr Jenrick in the contest, telling GB News: “Who do we want to lead us to the next general election? Who do we think can take on the Reverend Starmer? Who will be able to converse with Nigel Farage and see where that may go one way or another? Who can steal Nigel’s clothes, if necessary, which may be the best way of going about it?
“Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that that person is Robert Jenrick.”
Tory MP Richard Fuller took over as interim party chair after fellow MP Richard Holden resigned the post after the general election.
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