Tomorrow marks our first round of voting in the Tory leadership election. The six candidates standing to replace Rishi Sunak will be initially voted upon by Tory MPs.
They will reduce the number of candidates in stages until two go to the membership after the party conference.
As it stands, there are six runners and riders. Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly, Priti, Patel, Tom Tugendhat, Kemi Badenoch and Mel Stride.
The first question they want to answer is what went wrong.
Jacob Rees-Mogg has waded in on the Tory leadership contest
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I think Kemi Badenoch put it well at her launch yesterday.
‘This was one of our mistakes. We talked right but governed left, sounding like conservatives, but acting like Labour.’
We governed with a strong rhetoric on issues such as migration, but the electorate saw record levels of both legal and illegal immigration.
That's why I agreed with James Cleverly when he said this:
‘I will use my contacts and my reputation with Rwanda to resurrect that incredibly important partnership.’
It’s also why I agreed with Robert Jenrick, when he said this during our interview last week:
Priti Patel, Robert Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat, Mel Stride, Kemi Badenoch and James Cleverly are in the running for Tory leaderPA‘I have come to the conclusion that in that programme of reform, we need to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.’
It wasn't just immigration, either. We talked the talk on freedom and liberty, but then attempted to ban smoking. Continued on their lunatic Net Zero agenda, and pushed ahead with the nanny state, which will all of course, get worse under this socialist government.
Priti Patel was right when she said this:
‘I want to lead us in opposition to government, so that we can serve the British people again and give them back the freedoms and the dignity that Labour will take away from them.’
And Mel Stride has also been getting up into the batting. He said we also need to get back to our core values.
‘We've got to become that party that has a broad appeal for competency in government. That channels aspiration, opportunity, all of the things that Conservatism has traditionally been about.’
We fundamentally failed the British people in our promise to pursue genuinely Conservative policies. And that's why Tom Tugendhat was correct when said this:
‘What we need to do is to recognise the errors, recognize the mistakes, own them and be honest about them, but offer the best apology that we can.’
We clearly have some of the six most brilliant, genius people in the world running for the future who have said these amazingly true and thoughtful things.
The candidates have been good at identifying the problem. But what is the cure when the party is untrusted and Reform has pinched our finest clothes?