It is the final day of Tory conference and the event for which we have all been waiting: the four leadership candidates are each delivering their 20-minute speeches, setting out their vision for the country. Tom Tugendhat had the mixed blessing of going first. The benefit of this was that it allowed him to deliver a series of gags about Labour donor Lord Alli which still sounded somewhat fresh. But it meant too that his speech was something of a warm-up act, delivering feel-good lines to an audience that was still filtering in throughout the first few minutes.
The first half of Tugendhat’s speech was pedestrian
The first half of Tugendhat’s speech was somewhat pedestrian. He spoke of an optimism at the conference and the need to take the fight to Labour. Keir Starmer, he said, was guilty of leading the ‘most vindictive and venal administration in decades.’ The audience politely applauded but it felt stilted, rather than enthusiastic.
References to NHS failings felt more like a tick-box exercise than a serious agenda for public sector reform. His section on cutting net arrivals to 100,000 felt like an obligation rather than a great political cause.
The second half saw a marked improvement. The final seven minutes of Tugendhat’s speech focused on the importance of wedding economic prosperity to foreign affairs. He used the example of Germany – to enthusiastic applause – which he argued had bartered its future on its energy deal with Russia. ‘Trust’ he said, ‘is the foundation of growth,’ in one of his better lines.
His conclusion was met with loud clapping and even a chant of ‘Tom! Tom! Tom!’ Yet there was a lack of any great theme holding the speech together. Tugendhat opened by suggesting that there was too much focus on ‘personality’ in politics, yet he spent several minutes talking about character and his own military service. There were endless references to ‘fighting’ and ‘battles’. ‘I have never failed a mission yet,’ he told the room with a smile – presumably ignoring his previous leadership bid in 2022. He mentioned again the need for a ‘Conservative revolution’. But he did not use this golden opportunity to stress the need for a revolution in the various fields he mentioned, like the NHS. Overall the address was much like his campaign: slick, polished, full of nice lines but lacking a sense of an overarching narrative.
This is only the third time that the Conservatives have used their conference as an explicit beauty pageant. The one we all remember was when David Cameron became leader in 2005, but the previous occasion was 1963 when Rab Butler’s plodding speech killed his chances. One newspaper ran with the headline ‘Butler fails to rouse Tories.’ The same might be said of Tom Tugendhat after his performance today.
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