Could there be a Tory leadership upset?

The end is finally in sight. In a week’s time, the winner of the Conservative leadership contest will be announced. Within the Tory party, most MPs are braced for a Kemi Badenoch victory. Could the result be closer than currently expected? On Thursday night, there were rumours that the final ConservativeHome survey of members would make for uncomfortable reading for Badenoch – with Jenrick in a close second. The results have now been published and the survey finds that Badenoch maintains a comfortable lead.

On the question of ‘who should be the next leader of the Conservative and Unionist party?’, 55 per cent of respondents said Badenoch compared with 31 per cent who said Robert Jenrick. There are still some undecideds out there: 14 per cent opted for ‘don’t know’. In the past, the ConservativeHome survey has proved a fairly accurate guide to where the membership sits. It follows that today’s findings are not going to impact the dynamics of the contest – the general expectation is still that Badenoch is on course to win.

There was a point when it seemed as though Jenrick was well placed to beat Badenoch. In the week before party conference, the former Home Office minister had established himself as the bookies’ favourite and cut down Badenoch’s lead to just four points according to a YouGov poll. However, while party conference wasn’t bad for Jenrick, it also did not lead to a game-changing moment for him. Instead, his speech and presence there failed to match some of the hype before the event.

Since the contest reached the membership stage, the contest has taken on the typical dynamics of a frontrunner and an insurgent. Badenoch has made a few carefully chosen media appearances and only agreed to one leaders’ debate. In contrast, Jenrick has been calling for more opportunities to debate and appearing on the media multiple times a day. It suggests that Jenrick’s camp know he has a fair amount of ground to make up. Their hope is that his clear position on leaving the ECHR is cutting through with the membership.

So, could there be a Tory leadership upset? What should give the Jenrick camp cause for hope is simply that polling of the Conservative membership is hard to do and expensive. It means that there just isn’t as much information out there as there would be in a general election – and as the last election showed, pollsters can get it wrong. While some of Badenoch’s supporters hope she will win comfortably (‘70/30 would be a great result that would give her authority over the party,’ says one such MP), others are not taking anything for granted. They point to how, in 2022, Liz Truss was expected to trounce Rishi Sunak. While Truss beat him, the result was closer than the polls had suggested – she won 57 per cent of Tory members’ votes to 43 per cent for Sunak.