Conservative members vote for James Cleverly as Leader

James Cleverly was voted the best candidate to lead the Conservative Party on social justice issues, in a poll at the Party conference in Birmingham.

All four Tory leadership candidates appeared at a packed out Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) hustings at the Conservative Party Conference on Monday evening.

The event was chaired by the Chairman of the CSJ, Rt Hon Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP. At the end of the hustings, attendees were asked: ‘Which candidate would do the most for social justice?’ 29 per cent of members backed James Cleverly to lead the Conservative Party. Tom Tugendhat and Robert Jenrick came joint second (24 per cent), and Kemi Badenoch fourth (23 per cent).

The candidates were questioned by the audience on how they would deal with a range of social justice issues, including the cost of living crisis, mental health epidemic and spiralling welfare bill.

Key moments included:

Rt Hon Tom Tugendhat MP said:

“There are some in the world who say that the job of the government is to be like a charitable donor, to hand out, but that’s not right. You can very rapidly see individuals becoming effectively slaves of the state, dependent on the whims of bureaucrats they will never meet and who will never know them.”

Rt Hon Robert Jenrick MP said:

“The first duty of the British government is our own people” and “let’s look after our own people first”.

Rt Hon Kemi Badenoch MP said:

“We can’t allow people to feel that the government can fix everything, because it cannot, but we also don’t want people to think that the government isn’t doing anything.”

Rt Hon James Cleverly MP said:

“The introduction of universal credit was a game changer” and that it was “one of the unsung victories of the Covid era.”

Following the event, Andy Cook, Chief Executive of the CSJ said:

“Keir Starmer recently said there is a societal black hole at the heart of British life, the question is what are we going to do about it.

“There is no way back to power for the Conservative Party unless it confronts the root causes of poverty.

“All four leadership candidates recognized the desperate problems facing so many people, the question is can they walk the talk?”