The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, will march on to the conference stage in Birmingham feeling buoyed. More than four in 10 Britons think she is doing well as Tory leader, compared with a third who think otherwise. As Nigel Farage’s stock has plummeted thanks to scandals over a £5m personal gift and donations from crypto billionaires, the polling suggests that the Conservatives could regain the mantle of Britain’s main rightwing force.
Yet Badenoch has been the beneficiary of circumstance. Her tenure as opposition leader has been defined by Keir Starmer’s project imploding almost as soon as it gained power. When Reform UK enjoyed its seismic polling lead, the Tory plight was double-edged: they were starved of attention, but that inevitably resulted in a lack of scrutiny, too.
It has been easy for Badenoch to appear formidable while her opponents have disintegrated. With the Conservatives now back in the race, the spotlight falls on Badenoch. Let us consider the absurdity of her proposed air defence system.
Our would-be prime minister denied comparing it to Israel’s Iron Dome, despite the term appearing in both a press release and a newspaper article under her own name. This amateurishness is one thing, but even on its own terms, her proposal is a mess. It will “protect the whole United Kingdom, our sovereign territories and British bases overseas”, she claims, which would be impossible for the £10bn over 10 years she is proposing to spend on it.
The former British general Richard Barrons suggests such a system would cost more than £100bn. What does this say about Badenoch’s sense of priorities? The actual urgent national security threat Britain faces is not volleys of missile attacks, but the climate emergency.
There were estimated to be thousands of excess deaths from heatwaves this summer, while our intelligence services warn of serious disruption to our food supply from 2030. Yet Badenoch has committed to repealing the Climate Change Act and claimed that net zero by 2050 is “impossible” without bankrupting Britain. This not only contradicts the conclusion of the government’s statutory climate scientific advisers, but Badenoch herself.
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