New Tory MP Warns Next Leader The Party Will Be “Shafted” Without Unity
3 min read
A new Conservative MP has warned the next Tory leader the party will be “shafted” if they don't include MPs who backed other candidates in their "team".
Speaking on the PoliticsHome podcast The Rundown at Conservative party conference in Birmingham, Rebecca Smith said she had asked all four candidates to succeed Rishi Sunak as leader the same question: "How do you include those who weren't you in that campaign?"
Smith, the newly-elected Conservative MP for South West Devon, said the “reality” facing each candidate was that they had to be prepared to accommodate those who did not back them during the contest.
"I suppose as a new MP I'm only seeing what I've experienced since I got into the House, and I've been really pleasantly surprised at how together it's felt,” Smith told the podcast.
“And for me, the key thing I'm looking for — whichever one of those candidates comes through — and where I've had the opportunity, I've posed this question to them: how do you include those who weren't you in that campaign?
“Because when there's only 121 of us, the reality is, whoever has been part of somebody else's campaign is going to have to form part of the team going forward."
She added: “So, I really hope that we are able to put those differences aside, five minutes after the result is announced, and everybody can row in behind whoever it might be.
"And you could say 'oh, she's so naive, gosh what's she thinking', but the fact that it's 121 of us is going to force a reality that if we don't do that, we're shafted, basically.”
At the conference in Birmingham, the four leadership candidates – Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugendhat – looked to impress Tory party members who will ultimately choose the winner at the beginning of November.
While the leadership contest had been relatively civil in the weeks leading up to conference, it became more heated in Birmingham with the candidates clashing over issues like Badenoch's remarks about maternity pay and Jenrick's contentious claim that the ECHR was forcing special forces to kill rather than catch terrorists.
Lord Brady of Altrincham, the former chair of the party's 1922 Committee, was also a guest on The Rundown. He said the Tories had “no choice” but to come together after the new leader is confirmed next month given how many seats they lost at the 4 July General Election.
“I’ve lived it," said Brady, the former MP for Altrincham and Sale West.
"There were 165 of us [Tory MPs] in 1997 and that was exactly my experience.
"We went through a leadership election almost as soon as I arrived in Parliament. We managed eight candidates, bizarrely. But once it was over, there was a very big job to be done simply in providing an opposition."
He added: “It is hard enough making it all work because there are so many things in need doing and not enough people to do them. You will have, I'm afraid, an even harder job with 121 MPs, so there's really no choice."
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