The Tory leadership battle ramped up today as Robert Jenrick warned the party must admit ‘where we went wrong’ and cut immigration.
Formally launching his campaign in his Newark constituency, the former minister said he was going to tell ‘hard truths’ about the need for a change in direction.
He said the ‘primary reason’ for the election defeat was ‘broken promises’ on tackling immigration.
Mr Jenrick – speaking without notes in an echo of David Cameron‘s 2005 leadership tilt – also insisted the NHS must be treated like a ‘public service not a religion’, and attacked Labour for sacrificing jobs on the ‘altar of Net Zero’.
After being introduced by ex-Cabinet colleague Esther McVey, Mr Jenrick told activists he would not ‘shirk difficult decisions’ if he becomes leader.
He acknowledged there were ‘many reasons’ Keir Starmer secured his huge majority last month.
‘But the principal one, the primary one, is that we broke our promise to the British public to deliver controlled and reduced migration and the secure border that the public rightfully demand,’ he said.
‘We allowed the cycle of broken promises to continue.
‘And as a minister, when I concluded that I couldn’t secure any more changes to our legal migration system, I resigned from Cabinet last year because I for one was not willing to be just another minister who makes and breaks promises on immigration.’
Formally launching his campaign in his Newark constituency, Robert Jenrick said he was going to tell ‘hard truths’ about the need for a change in direction
After being introduced by ex-Cabinet colleague Esther McVey (pictured), Mr Jenrick told activists he would not ‘shirk difficult decisions’ if he becomes leader
Bookmakers have Mr Jenrick as second favourite in the race behind shadow communities secretary Kemi Badenoch (left). James Cleverly (right) is also a contender
‘We have a mountain to climb.
Shadow security minister Tom Tugendhat is a candidate from the One Nation wing of the party
Former home secretary Priti Patel has also thrown her hat into the ring to lead the Tories
Mr Jenrick is among six candidates trying to succeed Rishi Sunak, with the One Nation and right-wing factions struggling for control.
But the contest is set to be an attritional one, with the winner not due to be announced until November 2 – three days after Labour’s first Budget.
There have already been complaints about ‘dirty tricks’ between rival camps.
Bookmakers have Mr Jenrick as second favourite in the race behind shadow communities secretary Kemi Badenoch.
The two rivals from the right of the party are up against shadow work and pensions secretary Mel Stride, shadow security minister Tom Tugendhat, shadow home secretary James Cleverly and former home secretary Dame Priti Patel.
The field will be whittled down to four in time for the Tory conference in Birmingham in the autumn before MPs vote for a final two who will face a ballot of Conservative members.
At his launch, Mr Jenrick complained that the British political system has appeared ‘either unwilling or unable’ to do the ‘basic duty’ to ‘secure our borders.’
He said: ‘I saw the British state finding it difficult to build united and cohesive communities, I saw intercommunal violence, I saw extremism, I saw challenges of diminishing public trust, I saw an economic model that was fundamentally failing’.
If ‘mass migration’ was ‘rocket fuel for our economy,’ the UK would have ‘just lived through the greatest age of economic growth,’ he claimed. Mr Jenrick told the audience: ‘I fought relentlessly for solutions to these problems… and yet our political system was either unwilling or unable to affect the change that this country needs.’
He claimed he had reached the conclusion that ‘the system that I had been part of, that I had upheld, was completely broken and was contributing to our national decline’.
Mr Jenrick said: ‘Despite spending more money than ever before, too much of the British state simply wasn’t working. Nowhere exemplifies this challenge more than the NHS.’
The leader hopeful took aim at spending and quangos in the health service, adding: ‘We allowed the lions on the frontline of the NHS to be let down by the donkeys in the back offices.’
Hitting out at the new Government, he said Labour were guilty of ‘too many delusions,’ adding: ‘If anyone tells you the grown-ups are in charge, just look at Ed Miliband.’
The party has ‘lied about the state of our public finances’ and already ‘begun to break their promises’ by hinting at tax rises in the Budget, Mr Jenrick claimed.
Mr Jenrick is centring his pitch on a tough immigration stance and pulling out of the European Convention on Human Rights.
In a campaign video this week, he said Mr Sunak’s party had been ‘unable or unwilling’ to do what was required to reduce the number of people coming to the UK.
Hundreds of thousands of people ‘we didn’t need’ had arrived legally while ‘dangerous’ immigrants could not be deported, he said.
Mr Jenrick resigned from Mr Sunak’s government last year, claiming that the plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda did not go far enough.
Shadow work and pensions secretary Mel Stride is another hopeful in the contest
He said the party must respond to the threat from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK on the Right, as well as winning back former heartlands in southern England which were lost to the Liberal Democrats.
Suella Braverman, who bowed out of the race last week, warned the Tories have ‘no chance of winning the next general election’ as long as Mr Farage’s outfit ‘is a viable alternative’.
The former home secretary denied speculation she might defect unless she was ‘driven out to Reform by my colleagues’.
Arguing that Tory-to-Reform defector Lee Anderson ‘should be a Conservative MP’, Ms Braverman told GB News: ‘We should not be hounding out Conservatives, right-wingers, Eurosceptics, people who want to stand up for our flag and our faith as if they are somehow swivel-eyed loons.’
She cautioned any Tory leader against ‘complacency’ over the threat from the right, saying ‘Reform can do better’ and ‘young people are voting more for Reform than they are for the Conservatives’.
