LONDON, Sept 29, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Britain's opposition Conservatives gather for an annual conference on Sunday, licking their wounds from an historic election defeat and locked in battle over the party's future direction.

The four-day meeting in Birmingham, central England, comes three months after the Tories were ousted from power by Labour, making Keir Starmer prime minister.

It is the Conservatives' first conference in opposition since 2009 -- a year before David Cameron set them on their way to 14 years of consecutive but chaotic rule, marked by austerity, Brexit, the Covid pandemic and in-fighting.

The get-together will see four candidates audition in front of parliamentary colleagues and grassroots members to try to convince them that they should replace ex-premier Rishi Sunak as the next Tory leader.

Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat will all make pitches from the stage in the main hall at the International Convention Centre in Britain's second-largest city.

"It's essentially going to be a talent parade," Robert Ford, politics professor at the University of Manchester, told AFP.

Conservative MPs will vote next week to determine the final two candidates. Party members will then select the winner in a ballot that closes at the end of October.

Britain's new opposition leader -- and the person tasked with reuniting the party and making it electable again -- will be announced on Saturday November 2.

Whoever is chosen will determine whether the party tacks further to the right or seeks to regain the centre ground following the Conservatives' worst-ever general election result on July 4.

Labour won a whopping 174-seat majority in the 650-seat UK parliament. The Tories lost 251 seats to return just 121 MPs, the lowest number in their history.

It capped a stunning downfall from the previous election in 2019 when the Tories won an 80-seat majority under Boris Johnson, mainly on a promise to "get Brexit done".

- Conundrum -

The party unravelled in spectacular fashion. Several scandals, not least Downing Street staff partying during coronavirus lockdowns, forced Johnson from office.

His successor, Liz Truss, then lasted just 49 days due to her mini-budget which tanked the pound and spooked markets.

Sunak, brought in to steady the ship, was unable to reverse the slide and his 20 months in office were marred by factional infighting.

After the election he announced he would step down once a successor had been chosen.

The party faces a dilemma: should it focus on winning back voters who defected to Nigel Farage's hard-right Reform UK party or aim to regain the support of those who switched to the centrist Liberal Democrats?

The party as a whole has drifted rightwards in recent years but Badenoch and Jenrick are seen as the more right-wing of the candidates, with Cleverly and Tugendhat nearer the middle.

"It's true that elections tend to be won in the centre ground, unless one of the other parties abandons it completely," said Tim Bale, politics professor at Queen Mary University of London.

"Now that Labour seem to be absolutely determined to hog it, it would seem that the Conservatives probably have to fight on that territory," he told AFP.

The conference ends on Wednesday.