Six children of Brexit seek new direction for the Conservative Party

The Conservative Party car was cruising along the British political highway long before the election it lost a month ago, with its tires scuffed on the asphalt, broken radio and windshield wipers, no air conditioning, low oil, peeling upholstery, a few dents in the bodywork, a burnt-out bulb and an overheating engine. No one was surprised that on July 4 it fell into a ravine.

After the major blow (an absolute Labour majority and the flight of voters from all sides) that left it off the road, it is now in the workshop, but the mechanics cannot agree on what to do to get it running again. The most optimistic believe that a few fixes will make it competitive in 2029. Most fear that many parts will have to be replaced, the bodywork repainted and that things will take a long time.

As the new Labour government is in full swing, launching proposals every day, lamenting the state of the vehicle and preparing the ground for a tax rise in the autumn budget, the Conservatives have launched the race to succeed Mr Rishi Sunak (who against his will will remain at the wheel until he has a successor in November).

There are six candidates to lead the Conservative team in the UK Political Grand Prix : Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch, James Claverly, Priti Patel, Tim Tugendhat and Mel Stride. All Brexit children survivors of Boris Johnson's purges and, for what he has historically been, between his right and his far right, closer (so to speak) to Donald Trump than to David Cameron or Edward Heath.

Everyone's obsession is to win back the four million voters who have gone to the far right.

While Labor sees a road as straight as the Great Prairies of the United States, the kind where you can go on autopilot, drive through the centre and almost take a nap without anything happening, the Conservatives see a very different one, full of curves. All of which go to the right on issues such as immigration, taxes, climate change or the culture wars.

It is as if from the back, Tugendhat, Cleverly and Stride are fighting to turn the steering wheel slightly to the right; from the passenger seat, Priti Patel too but turning more to the right; and at the controls, Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch are trying to move in the direction of Trumpism and European neo-fascism rather than in the historical direction of the British Conservative Party, until Euroscepticism prevails and Brexit becomes a reality.

The Conservative parliamentary group will conduct a series of selections among the candidates. Two of them will be eliminated in the coming months, so that the remaining four can address the convention, laying out their plans for the revival of what was once one of the best-oiled political machines in the West, but which is now in dry dock. After the convention, there will be further voting, until only two candidates remain in the running, and then the campaigners will be conservatives who speak out and choose the winner. Their track record of success in recent times is quite questionable, having elevated Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss to the throne (Rishi Sunak, whom they did not want, was imposed on them against their will).

The Conservative Party must reinvent itself from the opposition, but its centre and centre-left wing (Kenneth Clarke, Philip Hammond, Justine Greening, David Gauke, Oliver Letwin, Dominic Grieve, Rory Stewart, Nicholas Soames…) has been purged by Johnson given their resistance to Brexit. Of this historically important branch, only buds remain. All the participants in the succession war are openly Eurosceptic and in favour of a more or less British-style copy of what Giorgia Meloni is doing in Italy and Marine Le Pen in France. They believe that this is the future and that the first and essential step for resurrection is to recover the four million voters who turned to Reforma, the far-right party of Nigel Farage. Various analysts wonder whether this arithmetic is viable and whether conservatives can return to power without appealing to liberal and centrist voters.

After the election disaster, the autopsy was inconclusive and various theories circulated about the cause of death.

Robert Jenrick, the current favourite according to the bookies, is an immigration obsessive protected by David Frost, who was the minister who negotiated Brexit in Brussels for Boris Johnson; Kemi Badenoch, also well-placed, combative and not at all allergic to controversy, is flying the flag of the culture wars (she is anti-woke) and, if she wins, would be the first black woman to lead the Conservative Party; James Cleverly, a mulatto, with an English father and a Sierra Leonean mother, has led the Foreign and Home Offices; Tom Tugendhat, a veteran parliamentarian, has shown restraint until he realised that it was getting him nowhere and has now declared his intention to abandon the European Convention on Human Rights; Priti Patel says she wants to unite the party, but as head of the Home Office she has adopted the mantra of making life as difficult as possible for immigrants so that they do not come; and Mel Stride, with a lower profile and fewer opportunities, was Minister of Labour and considers lower taxes essential. Six sides of the same coin.