Stephen Crabb is the first Tory leadership contender to formally declare his candidacy for the job, with a rousing speech about his working class Conservative values this morning. The Work and Pensions Secretary pitched himself as the candidate who not only understands the people who ‘are really struggling, who look at us all in Westminster and […] see nothing to believe’, but who also understands how to hold the Union together – both of which are rather big claims.
He used his now-famous (in Westminster, anyway) backstory as someone born in Scotland and brought up in Wales in a working class household to argue that he was uniquely placed to understand these challenges. He said:
‘So here’s why I am standing: because I look at those maps that flashed up on our screens last Friday morning showing the geographical split in our nation – the blue bits and the yellow bits – and I really worry about the future of our divided United Kingdom. ‘A United Kingdom without Scotland is not the United Kingdom; a Great Britain without Scotland is not Great Britain. And then of course there is the question of Northern Ireland.’
The three questions Crabb will have to answer as he gets his campaign going are as follows:
1. Can someone who campaigned enthusiastically for Remain really win the Tory leadership when the country has just voted for Brexit? The Preseli Pembrokeshire MP is in a far less advantageous position than Theresa May, who spent most of the referendum campaign hiding in a cupboard, and he tried to address that in his speech. He said:
‘If this leadership contest is defined by labels like “Remain” or “Leave” then we risk never getting past this. Every day that goes by when those labels are being used by colleagues to describe each other, the greater the wound in our party. So my message to colleagues is that there can be no ‘Continuity Remain’ campaign to subvert the process that we will now undertake.’
2. Can someone who opposed gay marriage and holds conservative Christian views become a leading politician? Tim Farron struggled with precisely this when he was elected Liberal Democrat leader last year, though his party is far more suspicious of strong religious beliefs than the Conservatives are. Crabb was asked about his views on gay marriage today, but there are other, more difficult questions that journalists may pose as the campaign wears on.
3. Is he really experienced enough for the job? The frontrunners will both run on their record of delivering for London and working as Home Secretary. They are already scrapping over who has the best record, with Boris’s allies pointing out that on the issues that matter to voters, like net migration and border controls, May has hardly delivered, while May’s supporters claim that Boris has only survived in a largely strategic role because the scrutiny in City Hall doesn’t come anywhere near the heat of the Commons Chamber. Crabb, meanwhile, is only a few months into his first major Cabinet job.
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