With her second Conservative party conference as leader looming on Sunday, and her rival Nigel Farage finally losing some ground, the provocateur with a reputation for dodging media rounds and being ill-prepared for briefs has seemingly cured her camera shyness. In recent days, Badenoch has touted a policy to give the unemployed a “subsistence allowance” that would prevent them from buying booze or cigarettes, sought to bar benefits from young people who are straight out of school, accused Andy Burnham of wanting to take Britain “back to the 1970s” with public control of utilities, and enjoyed some mixed polling. That the rightwing press has greeted this with a relief bordering on delusion (the Telegraph went as far to suggest the Conservatives could win a snap election) gives a hint of how dismally low the bar is in parts of the Tory camp.
More than two years since the Conservative’s crushing general election defeat, it is not simply that the most successful electoral force in the democratic world has collapsed into irrelevance – but that it has happened with barely a whimper. The juggernaut success of Reform UK, mixed with Badenoch’s unwillingness to fully engage, has given large sections of the media licence to treat Farage as unofficial leader of the opposition, with the Conservatives getting most column inches when another one of them defects to Reform. The so-called natural party of government is essentially now an afterthought in the national conversation, throwing out an anti-migrant comment here and an ableist speech there in the hope of just getting some attention.
Meanwhile, the country quietly gets on with the day-to-day consequences of the last time it let the Tories govern: fundraising to patch up the roof at their children’s school, waiting a year to get a hospital scan, or walking past their now closed local library. There has been an audible sigh of relief from Badenoch’s team as her personal poll ratings markedly improved over the past year, even as the Conservative’s image has tanked (as of last month, only 19% of Britons feel the party is ready for a return to government). But talk of a “Keminaissance” misses the point: it means little that the electorate are slightly less put off by the captain if they still wouldn’t get on the ship for fear of drowning.
That, as of last week, Badenoch – nostalgic for the days the Tories were a main player in a two-party system – is still ruling out an electoral pact with Reform is only further weakening her chances of ever seeing No 10. It’s not as if the Conservatives have made any substantive efforts for reputation rehabilitation. Are they regretful of Brexit?
If re-elected, would they repeat Liz Truss’s deep tax cuts or George Osborne’s austerity? As the public faces mounting crises, from gutted living standards to long NHS waiting lists, Badenoch has largely kept stumm rather than offer any meaningful solutions. Indeed, on a rare occasion she has spoken out on a pressing issue – namely social care – it was to refuse to engage with Burnham’s reforms if paying for it involved tax rises.
You could argue that it would have made sense to regroup after such a large-scale loss – not least when Keir Starmer was expected to fulfil a five-year term – or that it is rather difficult to propose solutions for problems that your party has largely caused. And yet it is telling what Badenoch chooses to spend her energy on. While the former minister has told her MPs not to expect big policy plans until 2027, she has found time to wade into culture wars including, but not limited to: why she hates critical race theory; a U-turn on the Conservative commitment to meet net zero by 2050; and why she wants the UK to withdraw from the European convention on human rights.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
