‘I worry about populist politics’: Mel Stride says even progressive voters should want a strong Tory party

Progressive voters who oppose the Conservatives should still want the party to recover to ensure British politics does not lurch towards populism based on “negativity and division”, a Tory leadership contender has said.

Mel Stride, the former cabinet minister who emerged as a surprise candidate to replace Rishi Sunak, warned that attempting to jump to a “magical ideological square” after the party’s disastrous general election result would fail to solve its problems.

It comes amid anger over Nigel Farage’s response to the Southport atrocity . The Reform UK party leader was accused of helping spread a conspiracy theory about the attack by questioning “whether the truth is being withheld from us” after three children were killed.

Stride would not comment on Farage’s statement but said in an interview with the Observer : “I worry about populist politics. You see it around the world. It’s a fairly strong phenomenon.

“There’s nothing wrong with populism to the extent that it means that there are serious issues that people feel should be addressed, because that’s politics. That’s right and proper. But I do get very concerned when I see populism through the lens of setting one group against another, setting up the bogeyman, not really coming up with solutions but trading on negativity and division. That worries me a great deal, and I don’t want to see my country go that way.”

Even people who did not back the Tories had a stake in wanting to see mainstream parties that adopted a set of basic common values, he said. “That’s one of the reasons why it’s absolutely vital that we have a strong Conservative party, whether you’re a Conservative or not. There are mainstream parties that hold those kinds of values common to each other. And that’s one of the reasons why it’s really important that the Conservative party recovers and prevails.”

Stride, who was influential in questioning Liz Truss’s spending plans during her shortlived premiership, is seen as a moderate figure in the race. He said he adhered to a type of politics that was “deeply conservative and deeply inclusive, generous and open hearted – while being realistic about the problems and challenges we have”.

He said the remaining parliamentary party would quickly have to unite to win the next election, suggesting he was well placed to bring together competing factions that have caused years of infighting.

Stride also warned his party – and effectively his fellow leadership contenders – against making rash commitments that would appeal to the party’s membership, who will ultimately decide the identity of the new leader, but divide MPs. Tom Tugendhat, regarded as the favourite of the One Nation wing, suggested last week that he was willing to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) if it “doesn’t serve our interests”. Such a move is also backed by the leadership frontrunners Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch.

“I understand the temptation to take stark positions on that among some, because there is an appetite among the membership around those issues,” Stride said. “But I think it would be a mistake to take too stark a position on it.

“Whoever wins this contest will need to return to a parliamentary party that has its own views, and they do differ. The first role of any new leader is to bring that party together. If you’ve painted yourself into stark positions on things like that, that will be immeasurably more difficult.

“Secondly, we have time. We’ve got five years until the next general election. History rolls on and the terrain will change. We have plenty of time to feel our way into the right solutions on things like that.

“That’s not the same thing as saying I don’t have a view generally on that space, and I do. I sign up to the argument that we should not allow something like the ECHR, for example, to get in the way of us being able to provide an appropriate deterrent [to Channel crossings]. But I do think we should work towards the details in a measured way, and bring the parliamentary party with us on those kinds of issues.”

Stride said the loss of a reputation for economic competence was critical in the election defeat, citing “significant damage” by Truss. The party’s priority should be to have a “credible, persuasive plan” on the economy that differed from the “command and control” approach adopted by Labour.

“To have fought a general election in which the Labour party was quite comfortable to take us on in the economic sphere is very telling, because we are a party which – rightly, over many years – has prided itself in being economically competent,” he said. “You’ve got to make fiscal space and then use that to free people up to go out and seize opportunities, create wealth. That’s a tough journey. The new leader of the Conservative party needs to be somebody that can take the parliamentary party on that journey. This idea that the answer is to leap on to some magical ideological square that suddenly solves all main problems is just not realistic. What is actually needed is a consistent approach.”

Stride is one of six candidates in the race, alongside Jenrick, Badenoch, Tugendhat, James Cleverly and Priti Patel. MPs will whittle them down to two candidates before a final vote of members in October.