Robert Jenrick said he wants to build a “new Conservative Party” as he set out “five stands” the party would take if he becomes leader.
He said he would cut the foreign aid budget and raise defence spending to 3% of GDP if he leads the party back to government.
And he criticised former prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the architects of New Labour, as he unveiled his plans for a “new Conservative Party”.
The former immigration minister said his “five stands” would include leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which he said makes it impossible to deport unauthorised migrants.
“It is impossible, unless we leave the European Convention on Human Rights and we free ourselves from Tony Blair’s Human Rights Act,” he said.
“These institutions are creating an arsenal of laws by which illegal entrants frustrate their removal. We have to change that.”
He said his version of the Conservative Party would replace those laws with a new “Great Reform Act”.
He also condemned Mr Brown’s “crazy interim binding targets” on net zero and “appalling damage” to public finances.
He described the other “stands” as: “Yes to net zero, but no to Ed Miliband’s mad planners, getting Britain building again, defending our nation and our culture, building a small state that actually works, not a big state that fails.”
Mr Jenrick made his leadership pitch to Conservative members at the party’s conference in Birmingham alongside Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat, who are all vying to replace Rishi Sunak after the Tories suffered their worst general election defeat in July.
He appeared to deliver his speech without using notes or autocue.
If we change, we can win again. pic.twitter.com/UeFQt2jukH
— Robert Jenrick (@RobertJenrick) October 2, 2024
He said the party needs reform similar to that undertaken by Margaret Thatcher in the 1970s, when Britain was “broken” and a new Labour Government was “so fresh but already so stale”.
He spoke about his family’s life in the West Midlands and said of Baroness Thatcher: “Her Conservative Party reversed Britain’s decline and it did so by backing people like my mum and dad.”
Mr Jenrick said he wants to remodel the party so it is a “pressure group for Britain’s hard-working majority”.
He took aim at “mad targets, the carbon budgets” which he said were “driving the mad policies” on net zero.
“I say that, with our new Conservative Party, we will stand for cutting emissions but we will never do it on the backs of working people and by further de-industrialising our great country.”
