Tugendhat and Badenoch face questions from Tory members on conference main stage

Two candidates for the Tory leadership are to set out their stall on the main stage of the Tory conference, as former prime minister Liz Truss also makes her headline appearance.

Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch will face questions from party members in Birmingham, while Ms Truss is expected at a fringe in-conversation event on the second day of the four-day gathering.

The Conservatives’ last conference in Birmingham in 2022 was dominated by Tory infighting over Ms Truss’s ill-fated mini budget.

The contest to replace Rishi Sunak as leader has taken centre stage at the party’s first conference since their general election defeat.

James Cleverly and Robert Jenrick, the other two candidates, will face questions on Tuesday, before all four contenders make speeches on Wednesday before the close of the conference.

All four candidates spoke at a reception for the Conservative Friends of Israel on Sunday evening, setting out their support for the nation.

Ms Badenoch claimed a group of independent MPs who stood on pro-Gaza tickets are a “new threat”, telling the fringe event: “We must not pretend that these people are a minority.

“We have to fight this ideology that has no business in our country.”

Mr Jenrick said he would move Britain’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem if he were in power, while Mr Cleverly, the former foreign secretary, said Israel has his “personal support” in the “defence of your democracy”.

Mr Tugendhat said the Conservatives should be “absolutely clear that we will always stand with democracies defending themselves” and hit out against Labour’s partial arms embargo on Israel.

Their appearances at the late-night event came at the end a day in which Ms Badenoch faced criticism from other candidates after she appeared to criticise maternity pay as “excessive”.

On Times Radio, the shadow communities secretary described statutory maternity pay as “a function of tax”, and said: “Tax comes from people who are working, we’re taking from one group of people and giving to another. This, in my view, is excessive.”

Although Mr Sunak’s successor is not set to be determined until the start of November, he has kept a low profile at the conference.

However, he addressed members at a reception on Sunday evening, where he warned that the Tories would face further defeats if they did not unite after the election to choose the next leader.

He said: “We must end the division, the backbiting, the squabbling. We must not nurse old grudges but build new friendships.

“We must always remember what unites us rather than obsess over where we might differ, because when we turn in on ourselves we lose and the country ends up with a Labour Government.”

Although the loss was just months ago, the Tories are already striving to win back voters lost to Labour, Reform UK and the Liberal Democrats.

Elections expert Sir John Curtice told a fringe event on Sunday that the party must “command from both sides”.

“In other words, there is no enemy to its right, quote unquote, or the more socially conservative end of the spectrum, but it’s got to be able to command from both sides,” Sir John said.

He said the UK is moving closer to multi-party politics and that strategists need to work out how to deal with competing parties on either side.