Grant Shapps: ‘The place to win is on the centre-right, not on the extremes’
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Grant Shapps tells The News Agents where he thinks the Tory leadership candidates are going wrong, and what they need to do to get the Conservatives back to where they once were.
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In brief…
- Former Tory frontbencher Grant Shapps sits down with The News Agents to discuss the Tory leadership race.
- He lost his seat in the general election, but will have a chance to vote in the final round and hasn’t made up his mind.
- The ex-MP pleads with Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch to shift the party back to the centre-right.
What’s the story?
One thing is for certain in the Tory leadership race.
Whoever Conservative Party members choose as their next leader on 2 November, that person will be a right-wing Conservative.
The finalists - shadow immigration minister Robert Jenrick and former business secretary Kemi Badenoch - are both that way inclined.
The issue is, the electorate wants someone different, someone more aligned to the “centre-right”, Grant Shapps tells The News Agents.
Someone like James Cleverly, whose campaign Shapps chaired before his shock elimination in the previous round.
The former cabinet minister is one of several high profile Tories to have lost their seat in the general election. But he is still a member of the party, which means he has a chance to vote in the final round.
He speaks to The News Agents about what he thinks is going wrong with the leadership contest and what the Conservatives need to do to get back on track.
Who is Shapps backing in the leadership race?
Shapps will be the first to admit that neither Jenrick nor Badenoch are his ideal candidates, and he is now “genuinely in two minds as to who to vote for”.
“My first choice candidate was somebody who was much more in the centre ground”, he tells The News Agents.
But that doesn’t mean he has lost all hope.
Shapps says both candidates are electable “as long as they have sense to understand that in order to win the country, you need to be centre-right, but not off to an extreme."
And he says it is not too late for them to change.
“I actually do hope and expect that either Kemi or Rob would have that good, common sense, to get us in a place that the country would willingly and gladly back”, he says
That is “particularly now [the public] has had a taste of what so-called change is supposed to be under Labour, and it ain't as good as it was advertised”, Shapps claims.
But this may mean that whoever wins will have to massively abandon the right-wing platform they have been campaigning on.
Emily points to Shapps: "We know where they [the candidates] position themselves in order to get the members to vote for them.
“Whoever gets it will have to really reshuffle what they've been saying if they actually do want to … appeal to the wider electorate. By reshuffle, I mean row back, U-turn or lie."
Shapps agrees. But he notes that it could come at a cost.
One of the issues Shapps believes is now tarnishing Starmer’s premiership is the fact he stood on a “socialist platform” to become leader, but has since shifted to the centre-right.
Starmer was part of Jeremy Corbyn’s cabinet as shadow Brexit secretary, but later distanced himself from Corbyn after he expelled the former leader and some of his allies from the party.
Shapps says Starmer ended up “saying things [just] to get elected”.
Many on the Labour left have also argued Starmer has since abandoned the platform he stood on to become leader.
“I don't think it's done Keir much good actually because in the end, these things end up catching up with you,” he says.
How should the Tories take on Reform and the Lib Dems?
The Conservatives suffered their worst ever defeat in a general election back in July, losing many voters to Reform and the Lib Dems.
But to win back those voters next time around, Shapps says “I don't think the answer is to be like the Lib Dems, or, in fact, like Reform or any other party”.
“We just need to be centre-right Conservatives”, he says.
Shapps adds: “We have the inbuilt advantage of being where the vast majority of the British people are.”
He says when Labour wins, it is because they “move on to our territory”.
“That's what Starmer’s done, that’s what Blair did.”
When the Conservatives lose, Shapps says it’s because they “go off on some sort of tangent”.
He adds: “What they [the public] want us to do is be competent and realistic and have a vision for the country, which is something which we fail to do in our years in office.”
Listen in full on The News Agents.
