Both Dame Priti Patel and Mel Stride have come out with veiled criticisms of other candidates - but have done it in a courteous way. That's unlikely to last, as Rob Powell explains.
Conservative leadership contests always start with much handshaking and hat doffing, but it never takes long for the muckraking and kneecapping to commence. Mel Stride managed as much - albeit in a characteristically courteous manner - when he popped up on Friday to announce his campaign. Asked about another candidate's apparent volte-face on the European Convention on Human Rights, he said: 'I'm not going to get into criticising in any way any of my opponents.
Unveiling her tilt at the top job, Dame Priti was also in an apparently unifying mood, writing in The Telegraph: 'When we Conservatives fight one another, we lose.' The issue here is that fighting other Conservatives is literally what she has just signed up to do. And as such, when you dig into Dame Priti's piece a bit deeper, the tone inevitably turns spikier. 'Our heroic members have done nothing wrong.
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