Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch need to do one thing more if they want to win

The Conservative leadership race appears wide open with increasing numbers of politicians, pundits and journos taking sides. An old adage is that you should judge people by the company they keep and the proponents of the two candidates should be a bell weather to their characters, if it is character on which one wishes to judge the candidates.

In the blue corner we have: Michael Gove, Sarah Vine and Mathew Parris saying positive things about Kemi Badenoch. In the other blue corner speaking up for Mr Jenrick is: Lord Frost, Bill Cash and also Mark Littlewood of Popular Conservatives (PopCon). Be your own judge, but it looks very much like Mr Jenrick is the right-leaning candidate, not Ms Badenoch.

As for the Independent Business Network of family businesses (IBN), which I chair, it is not for us to favour either person, but to judge their policies and their likelihood to deliver these, just as we did in the leadership election that led to Messrs. Truss and Sunak.

For most people in Britain, the leadership election is merely spectator sport, an academic exercise, as it is only Conservative Party members who will decide, at least until the next election. But it is important nonetheless as the leader of HM Opposition has to hold the current Government to account and may well become the next PM.

Kemi Badenoch is an impressive character, she seems determined and has clear views on Woke and culture wars which are a powerful antidote to the decadent morass into which we have slipped in recent times.

When she canned the EU Sunsetting Bill, which would have removed all EU legislation from the UK statute book, it was against a background of Whitehall promising a go-slow on deregulation which would have timed out the process with no benefit at all. Instead, Ms Badenoch decided on a pragmatic approach, more likely to achieve actual results by focusing on specific legislation that businesses wanted removed of modified, to lift the burden and cost of red tape. In fact, she championed a detailed report put forward by the IBN on deregulation. As it happens, according to Ms Badenoch, the IBN was the only practical report put forward by any business group which is indicative of the poor support provided to business members by other business groups and the preference of some of them to block deregulation in order to maintain barriers to entry, stop innovation and protect vested interests.

This is a practical example of Kemi Badenoch's oft-quoted step-by-step approach to engineering real-life solutions. Two cheers for Kemi! Unfortunately, the process still led to almost no red tape being cut by Whitehall and delivery was thus a failure.

Just as Penny Mourdant was impressive during the last leadership race but was completely absent of policy on key issues, in particular on the economy and wealth creation on which all else depends, so it appears is Ms Badenoch. The IBN cannot therefore comment on her direction of travel. She is a blank cheque from a policy standpoint, which means it is not impossible to have a firebrand for the same disastrous policies as Mrs May and Hammond, or indeed Mr Sunak.

By contrast, Mr Jenrick is at the other end of the spectrum. Since his Damascene conversion to the right-leaning Conservatives he has been a "Duracell Bunny" when it comes to ideas and policy. Less so on business and the economy, but he does lean towards personal tax cuts (what about business?) and supporting nuclear power with some justifiable scepticism about Net Zero policies. He is also pro-growth. A good acid test is that the left/liberal mulch in the middle of the Parliamentary Party wants rid of him. He will need to have some steel to survive but he certainly seems to have energy and is not afraid to debate his points.

The thing that divides the two is policy. While it is argued that principles and character are key, it is only by understanding policy direction that one can judge what this will likely mean in practice. True, it is a long way before the next election and few policy statements today will withstand the passage of time. But an idea of the candidate's position on crucial matters such as economic growth, wealth-creation, tax policy, defence and security, foreign policy and trade, migration, jobs and infrastructure all help to formulate a picture of the true character of the individual. How else can we know who they are? We do not know them intimately and have only a snapshot of their characters. The thing we can judge is whether their policies are good for family businesses.

Mr Jenrick has plenty of policies, some of which would benefit the economy. He could do with more.

Ms Badenoch is policy absent, so unfortunately I cannot comment. But she may just turn out to be the new Mrs Thatcher.

John Longworth is an entrepreneur and businessman, Chairman of the Independent Business Network of family businesses, and a former MEP