Tugendhat doubles down on winning over Tory right

Tom Tugendhat doubled down on his bid to reinvent himself as a candidate of the Tory right as he waded into the growing debate within the party over ditching the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).

- DAVID MADDOX

Just 24 hours after the contest’s frontrunner Kemi Badenoch had dismissed leaving the ECHR as an attempt to seek “easy answers”, the former security minister told his supporters that he was willing to ditch it.

When the race to replace Rishi Sunak began after the election disaster for the Tories, Mr Tugendhat had been seen as the candidate for the party’s One Nation group on the left who would try to win back power from the centre ground of British politics.

He was seen as the best candidate to win back votes from the Lib Dems and Labour, if not from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK on the right.

But with the Tory membership seen increasingly as right-wing and some candidates believing they need to win over defectors to Reform, Mr Tugendhat has spent most of the summer pandering to right-wing policies.

Despite holding his official launch in the National Liberal Club yesterday, he used his speech not only to commit to leaving the ECHR if necessary but also to legally cap net migration at 100,000 a year.

The former army officer told the audience he had first proposed changing the ECHR after he left the military because it was “not designed for war, it was designed for times of peace”.