Leader of the opposition is regarded by many as the worst job in British politics. Peter Hennessy called the post ‘a transit camp – to either glory or oblivion’; Denis Healey quoted The Odyssey, saying it was better to be the ‘meanest swine heard on earth’ than ‘king of all the shadows’. Denied Whitehall’s legions of functionaries, they must work on a shoestring, painfully aware that historical odds suggest their efforts are likely to fail.
Yet few holders of the role have faced a more awesome challenge than Kemi Badenoch. Today she marks 100 days as party leader, with the Conservatives facing a fight for survival. Her task is harder than many of her predecessors’. The last time the Conservatives began in opposition, William Hague’s team spent four agonising years working 16-hour days to win back power; in the end, they gained a single seat. Hague had 165 Tory MPs to work with, a third more than Badenoch’s 121, and he had no rival party to his right.
The stubborn growth of Reform is one of the more persistent trends of Badenoch’s first 100 days in power. The party now polls around 25 per cent, in a three-way split with Labour and the Tories. Rather than recede in prominence after 4 July, Reform has grown, grabbing headlines with a string of announcements on membership numbers, Elon Musk and Tory defectors.
On everything from immigration and tax to DEI policy and the Chagos Islands, Badenoch is inhibited by the record of her Tory colleagues. An unblemished Reform party can thus gleefully attack her with abandon. An attempt by Badenoch to attack Reform’s membership numbers on Boxing Day backfired badly. ‘That was a misstep,’ concedes one shadow cabinet member.
Badenoch’s allies argue that she has had more success with her Labour opponents. As Nigel Huddleston notes today ‘by the time 100 days rolled around for Keir Starmer’, he’d had the freebies scandal, winter fuel row and Sue Gray axed already. There have been successes in parliament: the grooming gangs amendment and Education Bill U-turn – both areas where Badenoch is on sure footing.
In the Commons Badenoch can use her Loto status – so often an albatross – to her advantage, framing politics as a two-party contest. Here, Farage and Reform can be dismissed as a kind of bastardised Randolph Churchill and his ‘Fourth party,’ shouting noisily from the sidelines. In four years’ time, they might well destroy the Tories; but in parliament, that prospect can more easily be ignored for now.
Loto is looking for ideas outside of parliament
Loto is looking for ideas outside of parliament too. To mark her 100 days, Badenoch yesterday did a long-form podcast with free speech channel Triggernometry. It’s the kind of lengthy interview with conservative-coded media which Pierre Poilievre has mastered in Canada. It helps build up new media and gets her message out on her terms, rather than via traditional media gatekeepers. It is the kind of experimentation that Badenoch’s frontbench needs to be championing now. The likes of Neil O’Brien, the shadow education minister, are showing how traditional parliamentary questions can blended effectively with new media like Substack and X.
Yet if inspiration needs to be found, the Tories need only look across the House of Commons. Five years ago, Keir Starmer picked up a broken and battered Labour party. For the first 18 months, he looked like a failure; a placeholder; the Neil Kinnock to Wes Streeting’s Tony Blair. There were countless resets, endless slogans, fruitless hours and memes about 20-point Tory poll leads. But when the Conservative collapse came, Starmer was there to collect his prize.
Only twice since 1945 has a government with a working majority been replaced at a single election by a government with a working majority of another party. The first time was Ted Heath in 1970; the second time was Keir Starmer in 2024. If Badenoch is to become the third, she will need to learn the lessons of her first hundred days and fight her battles on terrain most advantageous.
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