You would not normally expect a Tory leadership campaign launch to take place at a comedy-festival venue in the trendy Southbank of London. Nor would you expect it to be situated in a small circus-tent, with spotlights beaming on an elevated stage in the centre. Nonetheless, Tory leadership contender Rory Stewart strolled out onto the stage of the ‘underbelly’ circus-tent this evening to launch his bid to be prime minister, looking like a slightly sinister ring-master.
Stewart’s message to the several hundred people who had gathered to see him could not have been clearer: I am not your usual Tory candidate, and I can reach the kind of people who would never normally vote for the Conservative party.
In his speech, Stewart chose to characterise the Tory leadership race as a clear choice for Conservative members: ‘A choice on the one hand of fairy story, and the other hand, of the energy of prudence, of seriousness, of realism’ of his campaign, that he said would make the United Kingdom a better place.
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