Rishi Sunak arrives in Birmingham ahead of Conservative Party conference

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Louise Thomas

Editor

Rishi Sunak has arrived in Birmingham ahead of the Conservative Party conference, as those hoping to succeed him as party leader were greeted by supporters.

Mr Sunak arrived on Saturday afternoon with his wife Akshata Murty. The pair were welcomed by interim party chairman Richard Fuller ahead of the conference officially getting under way on Sunday.

The first conference since the party’s general election defeat in July will see the contest for the party leadership feature prominently.

Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat will all have an opportunity to address the conference – which will run until Wednesday – and their campaigns will be lobbying MPs before parliamentarians pick the final two on October 10.

Members will choose between those two, with the result declared on November 2.

Ms Badeonoch arrived shortly ahead of Mr Sunak on Saturday afternoon, and spoke to a number of supporters of her campaign before heading into her hotel.

Mr Cleverly and Mr Jenrick followed after Mr Sunak’s arrival.

Braintree MP Mr Cleverly and his wife Susie were greeted by Arun Photay, regional chairman of the West Midlands Conservatives and Michael Winstanley, chair of conference.

Mr Jenrick was greeted by a crowd of his supporters carrying “Jenrick for leader” placards, as he and his wife Michal Berkner arrived in Birmingham.

Mr Tugendhat was final leadership candidate to arrive on Saturday.

The Tonbridge MP was greeted by a crowd of supporters wearing T-shirts and foam hands emblazoned with his name “Tom”.

Ahead of the conference getting under way, former party leader and prime minister Theresa May warned that the party “failed to see the threat from the Liberal Democrats” while focusing too much on Reform.

Writing in The Times on Saturday, Baroness May said the candidates for the leadership could “play into Reform’s hands” by failing to understand why they lost the general election.

She said the Conservatives lost power in July not due to policy but because the party had “trashed our brand”, losing its reputation for “integrity and competence”.

Blaming the Partygate scandal and Liz Truss’s mini-budget, Lady May added the Tories had spent “too long tacking to the right in order to appease potential Reform voters” and “forgot that we are not a right-wing party but a centre-right party”.

As well as the meetings and speeches likely at conference, leadership candidates also took the opportunity to set out their pitches on Saturday in interviews and op-eds for national newspapers.

Immigration has so far featured heavily in the leadership race, with frontrunner Mr Jenrick making it a centrepiece of his campaign and arguing the party’s defeat was because it broke its promises on the issue.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph on Saturday, he said he wanted to “put Nigel Farage out of business” and described Reform as “a symptom not a cause”.

He said: “It exists in its current state because my party failed. We made promises on issues that millions of people…small ‘c’ conservatives like me, care passionately about, like controlled and reduced immigration, like securing our borders, and we didn’t deliver on those promises.”

Meanwhile, Ms Badenoch used a Times interview to accuse Mr Jenrick’s campaign of engaging in “dirty tricks” by lending votes to Mr Cleverly in an effort to keep her out of the final two.

She said: “If the MPs try and stitch it up, I think the members will be very angry.”

Mr Jenrick’s campaign has denied Ms Badenoch’s allegations.

Mr Cleverly, the former home secretary, focused on tax rather than immigration in an op-ed for the Daily Telegraph, saying Labour’s election attack line that the Conservatives had raised the tax burden to its highest level in decades showed the party “have work to do”.