Kemi Badenoch’s victory was not overwhelming. Her margin of victory was smaller than of any of her Tory predecessors since the current leadership rules were introduced. With the support of 57 per cent of the membership and a third of MPs – similar proportions to what Liz Truss managed in 2022 – her immediate task will be to unite her querulous parliamentary party and reach out to her opponents.
Her finishing cry – ‘It’s time to get down to business, it’s time to renew’ – is familiar from the campaign trail. The most immediate task is building a shadow cabinet. James Cleverly’s choice to go to the backbenches frees a space but leaves an obvious alternative leader untainted by her leadership if she stumbles in the coming years. If Cleverly runs for London mayor, she should support him.
For 14 years the Conservative party failed in its fundamental objective
Robert Jenrick’s willingness to serve may lessen his ability to act as a potential fulcrum for right-wing opposition to her leadership. His closeness to leading backbenchers such as John Hayes, Danny Kruger and Neil O’Brien will mean Badenoch will need to judiciously pick off his supporters. A shadow cabinet position for the latter would be wise. His blog has been a font of good ideas since the election.
In the short to medium term, Badenoch’s position is secure. Rishi Sunak’s parting gift was the party’s first poll lead since December 2021. Against a government as consciously abysmal as Keir Starmer’s, she will never be short of material for PMQs. Yet as William Hague proved, a few good performances at the despatch box are of little value against a government with a landslide majority.
Yet the foundations of this Labour government are far weaker than Tony Blair’s. The chances of it only lasting for one term are far higher. Voters turned to Labour out of frustration with a Conservative party that promised in 2019 to be different but failed to deliver on its basic promises on immigration, living standards and the NHS, dissolving into futile psychodrama and impotence.
Labour is proving just as inadequate. The party is trapped between its po-faced assumption that Britain would be better simply because it was in charge, and its own unwillingness to challenge the broken weltgeist and sclerotic Whitehall machine that have constrained government after government. The Budget on Wednesday was a clear signal that Labour is content merely managing decline.
Throughout her leadership campaign, Badenoch made this point again and again. She blamed the ‘political system… bequeathed to us by Tony Blair’ – the stakeholder paradise of judicial reviews, obstreperous quangos, and bureaucratic inertia – for preventing the Conservatives from delivering. Her promise to spend the next few years working out a plan to overhaul this is welcome and necessary.
Yet for 14 years, the Conservative party failed in its fundamental objective – to make the country more conservative – not only because of civil service obstacles, but because of the inadequacies of its own leaders and ministers. The decision to massively increase immigration under Boris Johnson was a canary in the coal mine. It showed the party neither understood, nor cared, about its own voters.
Many of those voters deserted the Tories in July. Jenrick, by emphasising his decision to resign as immigration minister and his willingness to leave the ECHR, understood this, and made reducing migration the centre of his campaign. Badenoch, studiously unwilling to be drawn on policy, did not, leaving many sceptical that despite a similar analysis of the problem, she did not share Jenrick’s wholehearted commitment to fixing it.
In 2022, she ran as the insurgent candidate. This time round, she was the choice of the party establishment, winning the support of former leaders such as Hague and Iain Duncan Smith, as well as grandees both in and out of parliament, such as Damian Green and Kenneth Clarke. Appeasing so many different wings meant failing to commit herself to any course of action. That will have to change.
Would she scrap the Equalities, Malicious Communications, and Human Rights Acts? Cap migration? Break with a planning system that makes ageing Tory voters wealthier, but Britain poorer? We don’t know. Yet any Tory government that was as serious about changing Britain as Badenoch claims to be would have to be willing to do each. Does she have the iron? Or will she surrender to the stakeholders?
This is the one reason why she is not trusted by many on the party’s right. While many older members may see a second Margaret Thatcher, many of its younger cohort see a second Truss: someone who can appease the Telegraph and GB News circuit with a few tough words on ‘the woke’ but lacks the drive to see such policies through. She has the next few years to prove them wrong. I hope she does.
If she does not, the major beneficiaries of her victory today will be Nigel Farage and Dominic Cummings, if he can ever get his so-called Start-Up party off the ground. The Conservative party suffered an unprecedented defeat in July. It has no right to exist. It is up to Badenoch to prove to voters that it can deliver in all the areas where its promises have so far rung hollow.
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