Something is afoot. The bookies can feel it. “Badenoch overtakes Farage as favourite to be next prime minister,” was the word from betting website William Hill this week.
Let me tell you what is happening. This is a challenging political time. Even today, there is controversy for Kemi Badenoch to deal with. But as a Conservative it seems to me that in the past few tumultuous weeks, she has shown many of the qualities necessary in a party leader: to appear easy-going and humorous; to craft a style that teases her opponents rather than being snide or unkind; and to do this all confidently enough to leave sceptics thinking that she really could be the next prime minister.
This easygoing style was frustrating for Keir Starmer. Badenoch’s riposte to his defence of his economic record – “if it’s all going so fine, why is he resigning?” – was spontaneous, humorous and deadly. The opposition cheered, the government benches stared at their feet. And this style will soon challenge Andy Burnham once MPs actually get the chance to cross-question him on his deluge of summer announcements. “Not being Starmer” may work in the dog days of August, but that won’t last long.
Burnham has been fortunate: few prime ministers have had such a gentle induction into life at the top. But the interaction between Badenoch’s fluency (which is about pitch perfect at the moment) and Burnham’s northern mateyness (which is also going down surprisingly well) is about to become more intense and take on new significance. Badenoch is being careful to avoid being cast as a more digestible version of Nigel Farage or the sort of Tory relic that voters grew weary of. If she can keep that up, her chances of stripping Burnham of his “fancy that, little old me in No 10” veneer are all the more possible.
Look at Badenoch’s recent comments about net zero and climate change – “Climate change is real. The net zero plans are not. They are a political fiction” – and then on social care (an offer of support but only if the PM rules out tax rises), and you see something of her calculus on the issue of risk versus opportunity. Are those statements an admission that the Conservative party hasn’t really changed at all, or evidence of a party leader offering a clarity rarely revealed in public?
Most leaders yearn for something that gives them an edge over their opposition, but Badenoch seeks distinctiveness from her predecessors too. Tony Blair did that by amending Clause four , whereas David Cameron stared down the Tory faithful on the question of same-sex marriage. This made them different – and therefore, to a wider electorate, electable. Badenoch follows that tradition by being questioning but not a climate denier, and by not slating Burnham’s social care plans in advance of their proper exposure.
Comparisons with Margaret Thatcher are always a risk, such is the sacred nature of her legacy in Tory circles, but I think some of her political skills are evident in Badenoch: never closing off avenues of opportunity, making it clear what the overall ambition looks like, and persuading MPs and the public why that ambition is worth some pain along the way. That’s hard in opposition. It can’t all be achieved by opposing for opposing’s sake.
Badenoch’s challenge is to reassure voters in leafy home counties – just as much as the “red wall” voters – that the Conservatives can be trusted again. Policies must be “conservative”, that is, driven by a philosophical belief that business is generally successful despite the state, not because of it. The tax regime must be based on funding public services, not by punishing success or constraining choice.
The faces and voices of our politicians matter too, which is why every single Conservative candidate has had to reapply to be considered for election and sign up to the party’s flagship plans. It’s why the controversial approval of the former convicted racist Joshua Bonehill-Paine to stand for his local council in Somerset was big news. Badenoch’s “judgment call” to let him stand, as she explained it, relied entirely on the fact that his approval extended only to his local area, and that since his conviction he has embarked on a Home Office-sponsored mission to educate people on the perils of radicalisation. In other words, contrition played its part in her decision. Amid a deal of uproar, Bonehill-Paine himself stood down on Wednesday, but Badenoch has now asked him to be an adviser to the party’s culture and integration commission. Again, a distinctive strategy. Whether the public thinks the matter was handled well, only time will tell.
But there is method there, for most pertinent to any Tory leader is Thatcher’s absolute conviction that the job is to set out the case and trust that public opinion will positively reflect it, rather than testing public opinion with a view to aping it. Badenoch, it seems, understands that.
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I’m not getting too excited. The Conservatives’ polling position is running at about 20% (YouGov recently put Reform UK at 23%, Labour at 22% and the Conservatives at 19%. Survation: Reform 24%, Labour 26%, Conservatives 21%). That’s a little way off celebration territory.
But with Labour now level-pegging with Reform, or having overtaken it, I can’t help wondering when we will see the inevitable Reform meltdown. Many Tory defectors jumped ship to Reform, thinking their voyage back to relevance looked smoother under Captain Farage, but now, with his vessel heading for the icebergs, the ructions within Reform will surely begin in earnest. There is opportunity for us in that.
Badenoch’s own poll ratings are climbing too. They are better now than at any recent stage, and a lot healthier than Nigel Farage’s. Does that matter? Indeed it does. It may seem odd that the party leader and the party itself poll quite differently, but hhistory does throw up examples of “catchup”, when people warm to the leader before that warmth extends to the party they lead. In the unbelievably time-limited windows of opportunity that most leaders get, that means Badenoch has to be different, amusing, professional, relaxed and penetrative. She also has to be unflappable – and there, the signs are promising. So far so good.
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Simon Hart was Conservative government chief whip from 2022 to 2024, and is the author of Ungovernable, the political diaries of a chief whip
