With Nigel Farage's Reform UK increasingly threatening to split the right, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has refused to be drawn on the specifics of her policy positions. Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, she said she would not "rush out" stances within six weeks of her taking over as leader of the opposition, claiming she wanted to earn the public's trust first.
"We are about what we are for, not just what we are against," Badenoch told presenter Amol Rajan. "I do the thinking and what people are going to get with new leadership under me is thoughtful Conservatism, not knee-jerk analysis."
What did the commentators say?
During the leadership contest, Badenoch "deliberately avoided" specific policy positions, instead focusing on "Conservative 'principles'", said the BBC. But some in her party have warned against "leaving a void on key issues such as migration that could be filled by Reform".
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Badenoch "risks missing a golden chance" to fix the party machine, opting instead to keep the party "as one of empty slogans", said Simone Hanna in The Telegraph. She has offered "little in terms of practical solutions to anything at the top of most voters' agendas", such as migration. Rather, she is "fixated on the optics of 'owning' her opponents as if she were a 2015 YouTuber" and "ignoring" the reality that she is leading a party "on the very edge of survival". The Tories "stay alive by the grace of Labour's catastrophic start in government".
Badenoch's "combative and outspoken manner" was "invaluable" during the leadership race, but "if Tories voted for Badenoch expecting her to be making the political weather, they will have been disappointed", said former Conservative Lord Chancellor David Gauke in The New Statesman. While she has avoided "serious howlers", she has not "landed any heavy blows on the government", while Farage has "maintained a much higher profile". Badenoch was "wise to eschew" committing to policy announcements too early, but "come the New Year, she will need to set out a clearer political strategy".
When Donald Trump's second term in office begins "there will be more than the usual ripples across the pond from Washington to Westminster", said Patrick O'Flynn in The Spectator. As Trump's "paradigm-busting political programme" unfolds, Farage and his Reform UK "stand to benefit the most".
"Seeing the most successful nation in the world prioritise its own citizens and send the woke Left packing is bound to increase the appetite for a similar radical approach to be tried out here," said Flynn, and Farage "is the obvious man to spearhead it".
What next?
It would require a "huge electoral feat" for Reform to go from five MPs to a political threat to the Labour Party in the next general election, said the i news site. Yet there is the "increasing volatility of an electorate that has already blown previous preconceptions out of the water by delivering a landslide majority" to a party that had been "well beaten in 2019".
And Reform UK is garnering interest from across the pond too – and not just from billionaire Elon Musk, who is rumoured to be offering a substantial donation to the party, but from a "number of billionaires", according to treasurer Nick Candy. Speaking to the Financial Times, Candy said British politics is set to undergo "disruption like we have never seen before" thanks to large donations apparently in the pipeline.
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