What an ordeal. If there is one thing more trying than watching a leader’s speech at a party conference, it is watching four of them in a row – four doses of platitudes, jokes that miss the mark, personal anecdotes about their childhood and parents which are supposed to build up a sense of character but instead make you groan because you have heard them a dozen times before.
She speaks with words, not phrases
Tom Tugendhat came across as a middle manager on a public speaking course. Never mind where he wanted to take the country – he didn’t seem sure how and in which direction he was supposed to leave the stage after his low-energy presentation. James Cleverly had a good story about how, as an army reservist, he thought he was being mobilised and sent to Basra, when in fact he was being sent to Luton. But otherwise, he came across as wooden and ponderous. Robert Jenrick was more full of beans but had nothing interesting to say whatsoever; you feel his one strategy to win the leadership is to bang on about illegal migration, and that nothing else much matters. The new leader certainly will need a strategy to tackle small boats, but when it is your dominant theme, it plays to Labour’s idea of the Conservatives as a self-help group for xenophobes.
Then came Kemi Badenoch. She is a big risk for the Tories. She showed earlier this week how she is capable of putting her foot in it and upsetting people – and not always the right people – over her comments on maternity pay. Was she calling for it to be cut, or wasn’t she? Still, it is hard to be sure – only it is absolutely certain that she won’t be winning a general election on that kind of offering, only frightening voters whom the Tories will need to form a government. Already, she has ensured that by the time of the next election she will be presented by Labour as the Tory who wants to scrap maternity pay, whether that be fair or not.
Yet today, Badenoch came across as the one candidate with anything interesting to say. She alone was prepared to address issues which have the potential to divide Conservatives, such as on net zero, which for Boris Johnsons of the party has become a holy grail. She alone was prepared to address the divisive subject of identity politics, which many Conservatives seem happy to nod along with. Her personal anecdote – of hearing her neighbour’s home being broken into while living in Nigeria and wondering whether hers would be next – actually led somewhere: to her saying that the experience had led her to fear nothing.
Badenoch could implode. She has a habit of handing her opponents useful material to use against her. But she is also – and this is not entirely unconnected – worth listening to. She speaks with words, not phrases. She is prepared to take on members of her own party, accusing them of talking right but acting left. There is no obvious runaway winner for the Conservative leadership, but Badenoch is the one who looked as if she could well grow into the job – as indeed Margaret Thatcher had to after weak early performances. That ought to be enough to convince Conservatives that she is the best of what is on offer.
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