Badenoch, Braverman or Mordaunt? Who Starmer fears most as next Tory leader

Fast-forward to the very near-future. Newly minted Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer has entered Number 10 with the overall majority most current polls predict.

A humbled Rishi Sunak has quit and the Tories are facing the exacting wilderness of opposition after being in control for 14 years.

Who might they choose to lead the fightback? And is Labour worried about any of them yet?

“The Tories are about to essentially trade places with Labour,” says Rob Ford, Professor of Political Science at the University of Manchester. “The Tories’ position next spring will be quite similar to what Labour was facing in spring 2020.

“Ultimately, they need to be an opposition that voters see as credible and sensible, electable and acceptable. And under its current leadership, it isn’t seen as any of those things, just as the Labour Party at the tail end of Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t seen as any of those things by a substantial proportion of the electorate.”

This is not an easy task for a party riven by factionalism and confronting the dual threat of a moderate Labour Party and Richard Tice’s right-wing Reform UK.

The Conservatives have splintered since 2019, but broadly split into three groups: “Trussite” free-market Conservatives, who strongly favour low taxes and a small state; the right, personified by several figures including Suella Braverman, whose objectives are to cut immigration and win culture wars; and one-nation Tories, who represent the more liberal wing.

Kemi Badenoch, the Business and Trade Secretary, is the bookies’ favourite to be next leader and has shown herself willing to take on the culture wars, with a Party conference speech last year which hit out at trans-rights and supporters of critical race theory.

Other possible candidates include Home Secretary James Cleverly, a long-time ally of Boris Johnson’s, Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister who quit saying Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda legislation did not go far enough, and Penny Mordaunt, the Commons leader who has become a favourite of moderates in the party.

A leader overly representative of any one faction would struggle to mount a major challenge to Starmer in office, said one Labour insider.

“The sort of person who would be a threat is somebody who can hit the right notes on the right, and not lose votes to Reform, but not absolutely put off the rest of their coalition, and that is obviously why Kemi Badenoch is the name everyone is talking about,” they added.

Labour strategists calculate that while figures such as Braverman, the former home secretary whose rhetoric on immigration has drawn widespread criticism, would alienate traditional true blue Tories, a victory for Mordaunt, who is not certain of retaining her Portsmouth seat, could enflame the party’s revolt on the right.

“I think the idea of someone like Kemi Badenoch is what Labour would find most frightening, but I think what is really doubtful is that in reality she can live up to what the Tory Party expects,” the source added, citing recent clashes with the outgoing Post Office chairman Henry Staunton and Sunday Times journalists over the government’s Horizon compensation scheme.

“I think you have seen over the past couple of weeks that she can make quite bad political judgments and she’s not someone who makes friends easily within the party.”

Allies say Badenoch’s willingness to get stuck in is her strength, but Ford believes Badenoch would need to pick her battles more strategically as leader, and especially avoid having them with her own side.

“When you’re in Opposition, and this will be a wrenching adjustment for the Conservative Party, the first fight you face every day is getting people to pay attention to you at all.

“That’s an area where Kemi may be able to deploy her pugilistic tendencies to good effect but you don’t want the daily agenda to be about Tory wars. If you can take that aggressive energy and use it to wind up the Government or get an argument going on an issue that suits you, that’s good strategically.”

Opposite Starmer, a younger, Black British and ideologically distinct opposition leader would make for an engaging battle.

Other next-generation leadership candidates could include Claire Coutinho, who was promoted to Cabinet as Energy Security Secretary only in August last year.

A former special adviser to Sunak as Chancellor, she is a close ally of the Prime Minister’s and has had a meteoric rise since being elected to the safe Tory seat of East Surrey in 2019. Rumours have swirled in Westminster that the PM may choose to shift Coutinho into the role of chancellor before an election.

Insiders also caution against ruling out Priti Patel, Johnson’s loyal former Home Secretary, who pioneered the Government’s controversial Rwanda scheme and remains a popular figure with Conservative Party members.

Though she was mired in a bullying scandal as minister, she has stayed out of the limelight as a backbencher and makes infrequent criticisms of the Government.

If the post-election fight is one for media attention, however, Mordaunt may be a potent force. She has capitalised on her role as Commons leader, which saw her take a central role in the King’s coronation, with combative performances in parliament. She also boasts a loyal following of MPs.

Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University, warns the Tories it would be risky to focus only on issues which motivate their base at the expense of challenging the next government on “bread and butter” issues such as the economy and public services.

“You saw that after 1997, because the Tories felt they couldn’t compete on the economy and public services that they went hell for leather on the Euro, asylum and immigration and in 2001 ended up getting exactly the same result,” he said.

He picks out Mordaunt as a figure “who can balance things” as opposed to “crossing the road to start a fight”.

While some would argue Jenrick can mount a powerful campaign on the single issue of immigration – he suggested Britain should leave the European Court of Human Rights – Bale added he would not send voters a message of change: “I think they are going to have to choose someone who is distinctive, which is why Robert Jenrick would be a really poor pick. He looks like every other identikit, middle-class Tory that’s ever been.”

Labour insiders admit they see Mordaunt as a “good communicator” and respect how she has built a personal vote in her once-Labour constituency.

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Braverman, conversely, is viewed as the future leader they would find easiest to frame. Her willingness to enflame division over protests, which lost her her job as Home Secretary, is often held up as an example and a Labour victory may be viewed as a rejection of the right-wing populism she is associated with.

“She is Trumpian and one-nation Tory MPs would undermine her,” said one source.

Cleverly may also face an uphill struggle for widespread support after allegations he called a northern town a “s***hole” and he was forced to apologise for a ‘joke’ about spiking his wife. The next Opposition leader’s success or failure is not wholly in their gift, however. Starmer will be under intense pressure to deliver fast and meaningful change, especially on the economy, after an election set to be dominated by the cost-of-living crisis.

Though many anticipate Labour will invest in public services, shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves has so far refused to pledge major increases in spending.

“I think the biggest challenge for Labour is that this is a ‘time for a change’ election, you can see that in all the polling data: people are fed up with the incumbent and want change,” said Ford. “But they face a really constrained environment in doing it.

“So in a sense the challenge will be to let people down gently because a lot of stuff is not going to change fast. You will not see waiting lists go down overnight, you are going to see train times improve overnight, you are not going to see improvements in your high street overnight but change will come. That’s a difficult message.”