Tom Tugendhat’s pitch: I’m a proper conservative, honest guv

Tom Tugendhat finally launched his leadership campaign today with a big speech in Whitehall – the third he has made in as many weeks. After previous efforts on the riots and public sector reform, today was Tugendhat’s last chance to hammer home his main message before the first ballot of MPs tomorrow: I’m a proper conservative, honest. To this end, he offered more red meat than a butchers, pledging (again) to potentially leave the ECHR, increase defence spending to three per cent of GDP and commit the party to 100,000 net legal migrants if he wins. 

Indeed much of the speech focused on migration: a key issue in a contest where four of the six contenders served in the Home Office. He bemoaned how post-Brexit, ‘we swapped young Europeans for older families around the world’, insisting that if elected ‘We need to rethink our entire economy’ to make it less dependant on migration.