‘Now it’s open war’, screamed the Daily Mail headline on 18 June 2015. Not, this time, a comment on the Labour leadership race that was then getting into full swing, but the contest to come on the Treasury benches. The future race to be leader of the Conservative party, a vacancy David Cameron himself pre-announced in his kitchen interview with the BBC’s James Landale earlier this year, might have slipped from the public eye temporarily, but the unrest that characterised the Conservative parliamentary party in the last parliament has not gone away.

At the start of the summer Labour might have assured itself that it would be facing a new Conservative leader come 2020, and its own leadership contest could have taken account of who this might be and how that person might renew the Tories in power. Sadly, the Conservatives featured little in Labour’s leadership debate. To the extent that they did, ‘Tories’ were there to be opposed but not necessarily beaten (or else Conservatives were themselves signing up to vote in the primary).

But after Labour’s new leader is announced, the party will still need to turn its mind to its future opponent. It will also need to give real thought to how to exploit the potential divisions a Conservative leadership contest will re-expose.

It is a point almost too obvious to make, but elections change things – their ramifications are not just in choosing an individual to fill a party post or in voting for or against something. Sometimes elections shake the kaleidoscope so violently that politics resettles in new and unpredictable ways. Labour’s own leadership contest demonstrated this in an almost unparallelled way this summer, as did Scotland’s referendum last year. While Labour finds itself in dire straits, and the Conservatives would have good reason to be hopeful for a leadership race which results in unity rather than rifts, the divisive impact of an internal vote cannot be underestimated.

Already the faultlines are emerging. Rumours circulate that Cameron may not stand down at all. This will upset many who have, even with the prime minister’s unexpected majority this year, never liked him and only tolerated him at best. George Osborne’s promotion to first secretary of state – remarked upon less than it should have been – has seen him off negotiating round Europe, looking presidential, and brimming with the satisfaction of having caused chaos inside Labour with his ‘emergency budget’. Theresa May’s public slapdown of Boris Johnson’s bid to use water cannon on the streets of London has reignited tensions with the ambitious and popular mayor of London, who is rapidly acquiring a victim status. Other pretenders know that solid performances in their new briefs will make or break their prospects in the run-up to 2020.In this pamphlet, a leading cast of Labour commentators examine the names in the Tory frame and assess their chances. Conor Pope of LabourList seeks to draw Labour’s attention back to how the chancellor is ‘comfortable encroaching on Labour territory’ without being accused of being ‘Labour-lite’ by his would-be selectorate. Jacqui Smith, former home secretary, says that May will find that ‘being one of the longest serving home secretaries is a double-edged sword’. Sally Gimson – a contemporary of Johnson’s in 1990s Brussels – foresees that the mayor of London’s record as ‘more Silvio Berlusconi than Julius Caesar’ might yet hold back the blond pretender, despite his resilient popularity. Former Progress staff members Felicity Slater and Ben Dilks explore how Sajid Javid and Amber Rudd each might seek to be both heir to Thatcher and Tory moderniser. Either has the potential to make the public look very differently at the Conservative party.

Jonathan Todd was an early sceptic about Cameron’s professed departure plans and thinks Labour will underestimate Cameron again as the prime minister ‘does the math’ and decides he can win a third term for his party. With Labour facing an uphill climb, boundary changes and the first majority Conservative government for two decades, Cameron may feel he has the latitude to set out a long-term course for the country.

Still the Tories would be wrong to believe that many of the Labour party’s problems will not become their own at some point. What impact would a poll on membership of the European Union have – would hardline Eurosceptics draw inspiration from Corbynmania and join the Tory party to steer it in their preferred direction? What about a second referendum on independence in Scotland, given some Conservatives’ increasingly lukewarm attachment towards unionism, formerly a central pillar of Toryism? Or an attractive Labour leader elected midway through the parliament who causes jitters in Conservative marginal seats?

Tory grandees can be in no doubt that their very different leadership election process means that a Jeremy Corbyn figure, who cannot command the support of a substantial support of the parliamentary Conservative party, will not be in charge. However, the cleverest in their ranks will see Labour’s public acts of disunity as a sharp reminder of how quickly things can disintegrate. A Conservative party refreshed by a new leader or a reinvigorated Cameron could leave Labour standing while the government runs towards a third term. At the time of writing, Labour party members reading this still have the chance to pick a leader who will cause the Conservatives problems, rather than the other way round.

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Richard Angell is director of Progress. Adam Harrison is deputy editor of Progress

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See the full pamphlet with all the potential leaders profiled here

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Photo: 10 Downing Street