“So, Andy Burnham seems like a nice guy.” Those were the slightly unexpected opening words of Kemi Badenoch’s first speech since the change in prime minister. But make no mistake: she was there to bury her opponent.
Even Badenoch-sceptics inside the Conservative party and farther afield agree the Tory leader is becoming more confident, and has been able to forge an increasingly coherent message for her party, one based on a promise of economic competence.
She does, nonetheless, face a different challenge now Burnham has replaced Keir Starmer.
Aside from being a fresh face with a likely polling bounce, the former Greater Manchester mayor is more of a media natural, with the ability to deflect Badenoch’s jibes using self-deprecating humour, such as a viral social media response last month after the Tory leader dismissed him as a “pair of eyelashes and a black T-shirt”.
“She has to adapt – it’s like with anything when your opponent changes,” one senior Conservative said. “As a personality, Burnham is much more likable [than Starmer], and comes with a fair degree of popularity. She needs to wait for weaknesses, and one immediately seems to be: where is the money coming from for all these giveaways?”
And that was one of the main themes of Badenoch’s speech on Thursday morning, held in muggy sunshine on a rooftop terrace in central London.
Labelling Burnham’s philosophy as “cap one price and send the bill somewhere else”, she repeatedly questioned how the new prime minister would pay for his early flurry of policies. The other central theme was ambition, Badenoch calling Burnham a prime minister “with small answers to big problems”.
Such message discipline would be necessary in taking on the new operation in No 10, one senior Conservative MP said, especially given Badenoch’s occasional tendency to get caught up in culture-war debates.
The MP said: “When she first became leader there was a bit of a worry that she would just talk endlessly about culture-war issues. But that hasn’t happened. The focus should be on the economy and jobs, which it currently is.”
A manifestation of Badenoch’s increased confidence is a schedule of regular press conferences and lengthy media Q&As, often without a particular policy to announce. It is notably similar to the timetable maintained last summer by Nigel Farage – before his byelection battle and anxieties over questions about his finances scuppered this.
And while she still maintains a largely take-no-prisoners approach, Badenoch now has rhetorical registers other than the sometimes caustic antagonism she used on Starmer and, in a speech which some Tories say began her turnaround, towards Rachel Reeves when she eviscerated the then-chancellor’s budget with almost startling ferocity.
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Such an approach would not necessarily work against politicians more relaxed in their own skin, said Luke Tryl, the UK director of the pollsters More in Common, who is a regular observer of its focus groups.
“If Burnham is seen to just laugh it off it might be less effective than against brittleness,” Tryl said. “The reason it worked so well against Reeves, and her budget response got such rave reviews, was in part because Reeves looked so shellshocked. I suspect [the new chancellor] John Healey and Burnham won’t.”
Bigger questions remain for Badenoch, not least why her own improved personal poll ratings have yet to translate into more support for her party, and whether her mission to reshape the Tories in her muscularly rightwing approach could put off some more moderate voters.
But for now, much of the coming weeks will be devoted to pinning down how best to tackle a PM who is a notably more slippery target that his predecessor.
“She has a summer to figure this out,” the senior Tory said. “But she has to be nimble – what works in July might not by September.”
