Another One Bites The Dust: Peer Profiles of the Unsuccessful Conservative Leadership Hopefuls

As the Conservative leadership contest rumbles on, you might be wondering what the candidates are really like. We’ll be updating this post with peer profiles from their election opponents as they are eliminated.

Tom Tugenhadt – a mixed bag, but decent to the last ballot.

 

Speaking to residents before and after the hustings it was quite obvious that Tom Tugenhadt was a well-liked constituency MP despite being a minister.  

I’d spoken at The Judd School in Tonbridge a few days before the first hustings in Ash and he was the only candidate for the election that hadn’t shown up to speak to the students. Our first hustings was intentionally packed with Conservative party members, Tom played hard and fast with the time limits, speaking for 10 minutes on each question, a classic tactic to avoid answering sticky questions. 

Whilst I was waiting in the green room at our second hustings and chatting with the other candidates, Tom had stuck to himself in the corner, not saying hello before going onto stage with the rest of us. He impressed upon the crowd to vote for him as the candidate, not for the Conservative party, a tactic that lots of Tories were using across the country. Given the smaller drop in vote share he experienced I suspect this worked in his favour.  

 Throughout the count his team were polite and when he arrived shortly before declaration, it was quite clear he’d won. As we walked up on stage, he stood next me and spoke to me for the first time, despite seeing each other twice before. He shook my hand on stage and proceeded to make his victory speech. The very human thing that sticks out to me is walking back to the car, Tom told me to wait away from any cameras and any other people. He spoke to me for a few minutes and said that I’d performed well and to keep at it and shook my hand again as we both left.  

 

Profile by Lewis Bailey. Lewis was the PPC Labour candidate in Tonbridge and is a Platform Specialist at Metrikus. He tweets at @LewisWJBailey. 

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