The Conservatives have kicked off their conference in Birmingham in a buoyant mood. Four years on from the Liz Truss mini-Budget that shredded the party’s economic credibility, and a mere two years since the party’s worst general election result in history, Kemi Badenoch has “a modest spring in her step”, said Politico’s Noah Keate.
The Tory leader “can point to disarray” in Reform’s ranks, “decent personal ratings” and the establishment of “clear dividing lines with Labour” as “reasons to be cheerful”. But “it’s still a massive road back” for Britain’s “once-dominant” centre-right party.
Last year’s conference “marked a low ebb for the Conservatives”; they were “in a fight for relevance and, perhaps, survival”, said Rob Ford, Sky News’ election analyst. A year on and “things are looking up at last”. The public have “warmed to Kemi Badenoch, soured on Nigel Farage” and the party has hauled itself “back into polling contention”.
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Key to this turnaround has been the Tory leader’s stance as the “common sense” candidate, combining low-tax economic policies with a disdain for identity politics and a promise to put “foundation conservative values” at the heart of her offering to the public. Although 50% of voters still do not see her as a prime-minister-in-waiting, her net favourability rating is up 20 points from this time last year, according to YouGov polling in August
“Reports of the death of the Conservative Party now look premature,” political scientist Tim Bale told Agence France-Presse. Yet despite attempts by the Tories and their allies in the media to “create some momentum”, it’s still “too early to talk about a ‘Kemi-naissance’”, with the party itself far less popular than its leader and still four points below its disastrous general-election showing in 2024.
There has been “one clear message” from Badenoch’s public announcements: “that Britain must get off benefits and back to work”, said Robin Ashenden in The Spectator. She had framed this as a moral crusade, saying that a life of work, rather than dependency, is not just “better for society” but “better for the soul”. Badenoch’s lean into Thatcherite “Victorian values”, along with “her customary war-cry of ‘What a lot of nonsense!’ may have increasing voter appeal”.
With its talk of benefits scroungers and repealing the Human Rights Act, the party “the country still regards as toxic is determined to double down on its toxicity”, said John Crace in The Guardian. Badenoch seems “desperate to track ever further to the right and abandon its centre right to Labour and the Lib Dems.” This “feels like madness” but “this conference is all about Kult Kemi”.
What next?
Badenoch has released a 30,000-word treatise, “The Right Way” outlining her core principles. This is “the sacred text of the Badenoch project, designed to underpin this week’s Tory conference, the manifesto and – she hopes – a return to government”, said The Times’ political editor Ben Riley-Smith.
With unfavourable economic headwinds likely to limit Andy Burnham’s ambitious reform agenda, there’s now a question Labour strategists “dare not ask”, said Keir Starmer’s former speechwriter Alan Lockey in Arguably: Has Kemi Badenoch managed to turn her party round like Keir Starmer did his? “Is she, after two years of patient preparation, finally ready to make her move?”
