Kemi Badenoch has a sliver of hope

I can’t remember when I last wrote anything as reckless, but the last week has been a good one for Kemi Badenoch and the Conservatives, perhaps the best since she won the leadership last November. 

After months of ineffectual performances (not least the week before when Badenoch missed an open goal on Angela Rayner’s stamp duty shemozzle) the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition landed a bullseye by going after Peter Mandelson on Wednesday. Keir Starmer was notably uncomfortable defending his Washington ambassador. 

To reinforce the pain, Neil O’Brien, near-universally welcomed as the new Tory head of policy in Badenoch’s reshuffle, showed how smart he was by tabling an Urgent Question to try to force Starmer’s hand. It is clear that this was one of the proximate causes of the timing of Mandelson’s sacking, since Stephen Doughty, the minister despatched to face O’Brien in the chamber, was frantically rewriting his speech in the minutes before their exchange – after Labour MPs were told by their whips to play for time.

The government is now in total shambles. The public eye is not focused now on Mandelson’s judgment in fawning over a rich convicted paedophile, but Keir Starmer’s in appointing him. Internally, Morgan McSweeney’s advocacy for Mandelson won’t have done his authority any favours either. This (and the arrival of Donald Trump next week, who will now face questions about his closeness to Epstein) is why some Labour people were fighting long into the night on Wednesday evening to try to save Mandelson. The Prime Minister is damaged and the story has not gone away. The Tories now will try a range of parliamentary procedures to force the publication of the vetting documents when Mandelson was appointed.

Phase two of this government looks just as chaotic as phase one. Starmer’s reshuffle, which put Shabana Mahmood, Pat McFadden and Steve Reed in roles where they might deliver much needed progress on asylum hotels, housebuilding and welfare was shrewd. Here too, Badenoch had an interesting gambit earlier this week, by offering 120 Tory votes to pass some welfare cuts. The last time she did this, when the cuts to disability benefits (actually a slowing of the rate at which the ballooning welfare bill will rise) were being voted on in the Commons, the Tory leader used it as a stunt, saying help was only to hand if Rachel Reeves rules out future tax rises. This time she would be well advised to add no such caveats and leave Starmer with the humiliating choice of passing a key measure with her support. 

The government reshuffle may prove just as important for what it didn’t do as what it did. My understanding is that Starmer offered Ed Miliband a promotion (foreign secretary or deputy prime minister were both up for grabs that day) but he rightly concluded that leaving his role in charge of net zero would lead to a slowdown in that crusade. The resilience of Bridget Phillipson as the plaything of the teaching unions at the Department for Education and the survival of Lord Hermer at a time when Starmer and McSweeney are planning to float reform of the way Article 8 of the ECHR is interpreted by the British courts is also likely to be counterproductive.

Add to that a Budget in ten weeks’ time which seems likely to bring more tax rises, and precious little in the way of realism about the way the country is living beyond its means, and Starmer’s administration is in as big a mess as any (apart from Truss’s) in its first 14 months since 1992, perhaps 1981 or maybe even 1974. The centrality of the economic mess means there ought to be room for a Conservative party that wants to lead on the economy and comes armed with imaginative plans to save Britain, a sense of direction and a leader who can communicate and spread optimism.

Not all of these attributes are present, of course, but Reform UK’s conference last week suggests that, while most attention is on Nigel Farage’s outfit, there will remain a larger space in which the Tories could operate than seemed likely a few months ago. The jamboree in Birmingham was high on energy and glitz and amply demonstrated the excitement and momentum which currently characterises Reform’s political progress. But while the sequined dresses, the fire and smoke and lights on stage were great fun and a great spectacle, there was still a fundamental lack of seriousness or heft. 

Farage openly admits he has almost no government experience in his ranks and this is not yet a hole plugged by the insertion of Nadine Dorries, Jake Berry or Andrea Jenkyns. He has successfully defined the battlefield of the next election with his plans for tackling crime and illegal migration – and indeed bossed the summer while Badenoch continued to make little impression on the public consciousness (presumably she was too busy playing SimCity on her iPad). But Reform’s economic policies are slimmer than a middle-aged politician after a year of Ozempic, and seem to involve that magical double act of limitless public spending and massive tax cuts. Farage, so far, has nothing to say about housebuilding, schools or the NHS.

So whither Badenoch? She has depleted her parties polling numbers by around 10 per cent since she took over and many of her MPs regard the conference in Manchester at the start of October as her last chance. But opportunity knocks a little louder than it might have done. The consensus among the shrewder Tories I speak to was that if she repeats her conference performance from 2024, with five major media gaffes in three days (topped with that immortal interview in which she declared: ‘I’ve never made a gaffe’) she might be gone by Christmas. 

But after 25 years of covering Tory leadership plots and listening to regicidal MPs, whose off-the-record quotes are bolder than their actions, there is a reasonable chance that Badenoch – if she performs well – might delay the reckoning until May’s local elections. Inertia and cowardice remain powerful motivators unless imminent extinction is rammed down the throats of doomed MPs. And – if she begins to show some progress in the polls – it is just possible Badenoch buys herself more time than that.

The most likely outcome of all this is that Badenoch fails, Robert Jenrick replaces her next year but is only able to stop the bleeding, rather than lead a revival, in 2029 and that a younger leader (the smart money is currently on Katie Lam or Laura Trott) is left to chart the next phase in Tory history after the next election.

But Starmer’s basic lack of politics or direction and Farage appearing just as far from constructing a viable alternative government, opens the door for Badenoch. Three months ago it looked like she had no chance. Now she has one. Can she seize it?