Tom Tugendhat Says He Wants To “Reform The Tories, Not Become Reform”
Tom Tugendhat is the Conservative leadership contender from the moderate wing of the party (Alamy)
6 min read
Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat has said that if he becomes the party leader, he would want to “reform” the Conservative Party but not allow it to “become Reform”.
Tugendhat is one of six candidates who have officially entered the race to replace Rishi Sunak as party leader. The others are ex-work and pensions secretary Mel Stride, former home secretaries Priti Patel and James Cleverly, former immigration minister Robert Jenrick, and ex-business secretary Kemi Badenoch.
Previously a security minister in the Conservative government between 2022 and 2024, Tugendhat is a leading member of the One Nation caucus of Conservatives MPs which identifies as the more moderate wing of the party.
After their worst general election defeat ever, there is a divide among Tories over the direction the party should now take to win again. Some MPs and former MPs consider Tugendhat and his One Nation colleagues to be “unconservative”, with one MP who lost his seat on 4 July telling PoliticsHome that they would leave the Tories and join Nigel Farage's Reform UK if Tugendhat became leader.
While Reform UK won only five seats in this year’s General Election, 4,117,221 people voted for them across the UK, making up 14.3 per cent of the national vote share while the Conservatives had a 23.7 per cent vote share.
Despite pressure from some in his party to lurch to the right to appease those who voted for Reform, Tugendhat was adamant that this should not determine what the Conservatives do now.
“What we've got to do is demonstrate to people that you know now isn't the time for a party of protest, whether that's Reform or Lib Dems or whoever, now is the time for a party that will actually deliver for you,” he told PoliticsHome.
“I want to reform the Conservative Party. I don't want to become Reform.”
He was keen to stress that the Tories had lost votes in “all directions” at the election — not just to Farage's right-wing party. With his own majority massively reduced in Tonbridge, he believed the defeat was a result of the party “losing the trust” of the British people and that getting it back would be about “making sure we deliver for people”. He stressed the importance of delivery and competence, rather than a particular ideological direction.
He was clear, however, that he would not let Farage join the Tory party. “The way we don't do that [recover] is by letting into the party people who've called for the destruction of the Conservative Party."
The future success of the party, in Tugendhat’s view, would not just be down to the leader but to the whole party.
“We've seen far too much factionalism in recent years,” he said.
“We’ve seen colleagues focused on knocking bits off each other rather than delivering for the British people, and we've seen this obsession with what's going on in Westminster rather than what's going on for people across our country, and that's what we've got to stop.
“This is not about some sort of arbitrary point between left and right, and some sort of meaningless language of the past. This is about delivering conservative values that are fundamentally in line with the values of the British people.”
As a centrist Tory, Tugendhat has previously suggested he did not support the idea of the UK leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) as a means of tackling small boats crossings. However, he now believes the UK should be prepared to leave the ECHR if it "doesn't serve our interests".
Explaining to PoliticsHome why he has seemingly changed his mind, he said that as security minister, he had to sign the extradition of several people “who should not be in our country for various different reasons” and that some of those processes had "been more contentious and harder because of the ECHR".
“Either we call for reform or if we don't get the reform we need, if we can't opt out or derogate, then we need to be prepared to leave. I don't think that's a particularly controversial statement.”
Tom Tugendhat told PoliticsHome his experience as security minister had led him to change his position on leaving the ECHR (Alamy)
However, for Tugendhat, who previously chaired the Foreign Affairs Select Committee for five years, it is vital that the UK maintains a close relationship with its European allies such as France.
“Every British division has got a French General as a deputy divisional commander,” he said.
“Most British squadrons have got a French pilot flying within their number and the same is true in reverse. The Combined Joint Expeditionary Force is a joint Anglo-French deployable taskforce. France is a very, very close military ally, closer than almost any other in the world, and certainly equal to many others for intelligence.”
His comments are in contrast with former prime minister Liz Truss during the 2022 leadership campaign, who told the penultimate Conservative leadership hustings that “the jury is still out” on whether French President Emmanuel Macron was “friend or foe” to the UK.
Counting former Tory prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill, and former US Presidents Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower as political heroes, Tugendhat also has cross-party friendships with Labour ministers and fellow army veterans Dan Jarvis and Alistair Carns. However, he joked that their politics were "all over the place".
In September, Conservative MPs will vote to narrow the field down to four candidates. The four remaining contenders will then give keynote speeches at Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham, which Tugendhat said he saw as an "enormously important" stage in the contest.
"Because that's going to be the moment when we're able to set up the school clearly of what conservatism means to us," he said.
"And for me, it's very clear. Conservatism is about delivery. It's about being absolutely committed to the interests of the British people and being absolutely committed to those values that are about individual responsibility, but about community and society working together.
"It's not denying the state, but understanding the place of the state in keeping us safe and making sure that we all have an opportunity to grow, and I think that's where we need to be focused."
After conference, MPs will vote in two more ballets to whittle down to two finalists. Conservative Party members will then vote between the final two and the winner will be announced on 2 November.
PoliticsHome Newsletters
PoliticsHome provides the most comprehensive coverage of UK politics anywhere on the web, offering high quality original reporting and analysis: Subscribe
