On the day of the local elections in May, when the Tories suffered a historic setback, Kemi Badenoch went to the gym and got her hair done. A screenshot of the Tory leader’s diary, leaked by a disgruntled Conservative, shows she planned a Harley Street dental appointment at 9 a.m., followed by 90 minutes at a boutique pilates gym at 11 a.m., followed by an hour-long visit to the hairdresser at 1 p.m.
Plenty of politicians take it easy on election day, but the leak is significant because it shows someone still wants to wound her. For her internal enemies, she remains on probation. ‘Thousands of loyal Conservative party activists went out that morning in a desperate attempt to door-knock voters,’ an internal critic charged. ‘Meanwhile, their leader was at the gym, followed by the hairdresser. She thinks that’s a hard day’s work.’
Aides say Badenoch actually ditched the dentist to attend a school play but admit she found time for the gym and the hair stylist before hitting the campaign trail later that day. They point out that she visited every council the Tories were contesting during the campaign. More importantly, they argue that the leader has upped her game and professionalised Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ).
Badenoch’s breakthrough came, close allies say, ‘when she realised she needs to be the main message carrier – unless the leader does it, it won’t get the same attention’. This was advice delivered by David Cameron, among others.
Former leaders also insisted Prime Minister’s Questions is about landing blows, not making points. ‘Prosecuting a case like a barrister, as some advised her, was wrong,’ an aide says. ‘Demonstrating your mastery of a topic is not the point. The rebuttals are more important than the questions. That’s what gets you on the news.’
Some will wonder why it took Badenoch so long, but her performances have been stronger since she wiped the floor with Keir Starmer over Peter Mandelson’s friendship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
In her team’s account, the Conservative conference was also a watershed moment, when Badenoch announced she would leave the European Convention on Human Rights and then gave a second speech with a clear statement of values and the bombshell plan to abolish stamp duty. ‘Conference was a bit of a Hail Mary but she pulled it off,’ one aide said. On stamp duty, she was attracted to raising the threshold, but when the shadow chancellor Mel Stride and policy chief Neil O’Brien talked her through the options, she plumped for the most eye-catching.
Thatcher is not the only inspiration. Insiders point to Badenoch absorbing ‘Aussie Rules’
‘For a long time she was interested in clever policies which work,’ observes one confidant. ‘Now she knows we need to keep it simple to survive.’ Badenoch’s instruction to her frontbench is: ‘We have to paint in primary colours.’
Most importantly, Badenoch, who once railed against the requirements of leadership – the hours, the focus, the need to take advice – is now enjoying herself. ‘Conference was a marathon test to pass,’ one ally says. ‘She loved it. She did more than 40 broadcast interviews without putting a foot wrong. She was more relaxed. She looked like a leader.’
Badenoch’s aides look at the febrile political landscape and see opportunity. Labour’s poll ratings are at an all-time low and Reform has failed to advance beyond 30 per cent in the polls. Even a five-point rise for the Tories could mean the difference between 20 and 200 seats in 2029. ‘The penny-drop moment for me,’ says a senior aide, ‘was when I realised that you don’t have to be in the high 30s or low 40s to win a majority, you can do it from the high 20s or low 30s. That means you don’t have to put together such a wide coalition, you can be more authentically yourself as a leader and a party. We have to be clear who we are for and who we are against. As Margaret Thatcher said, if you stand in the middle of the road, you get mown down by everyone.’
There is also a belief that Nigel Farage is making mistakes. ‘Reform made a strategic error by opposing the two-child benefit cap,’ said a CCHQ source. ‘If you’re against the political establishment, why ask for peerages? If Boris Johnson is the Antichrist, why accept Nadine Dorries as a defector? If you want to accept Nadine Dorries, why oppose the Online Safety Act, which she created?’
Thatcher is not the only inspiration. Insiders point to Badenoch absorbing ‘Aussie Rules’ from Australia’s former prime ministers Tony Abbott and John Howard, both of whom were at Tory conference. Tim Smith, a former Australian politician who once worked for David Davis, has joined CCHQ. Their experience of general elections every three years has brought a sharper edge.
Smith told colleagues to put aside their British diffidence: ‘Go for it and take more risks.’ Abbott also imparted wisdom from his experience of fighting the right-wing populist Pauline Hanson to give Tories some key attack lines on Farage. ‘Tony is friends with Farage but, just like Hanson, Farage is a one-man band.’ The former conservative Canadian PM Stephen Harper, who used a realignment of the right to win a series of elections, has been a useful sounding board.
Tory campaigning has benefited from a five-man attack unit, guided by Sheridan Westlake, who was instrumental in exposing Angela Rayner’s tax avoidance and pressing for Mandelson’s resignation. Attack videos on both of their departures were filmed a day in advance and issued immediately when the news broke. The Tory peer Stephen Gilbert has improved parliamentary handling.
CCHQ is now under the command of Mark McInnes, who helped Ruth Davidson to reverse Tory fortunes in Scotland. ‘Mark is used to five-party politics, which is experience most of us don’t have,’ a colleague says. Morale is buoyant. One CCHQ official jokes: ‘I applied for the job under Boris Johnson, was interviewed under Liz Truss and was appointed under Rishi Sunak. But when the party recently advertised a job in the press team, more than 300 people applied.’ Contrast that with Reform, which has listed a similar job on LinkedIn three times to drum up applicants.
One female aide was dispatched during the leadership election to search for a shoe Badenoch liked
And yet has any of this made a difference to Conservative hopes? Despite throwing the kitchen sink at policy announcements, the Tories remain on 17 per cent in The Spectator’s poll of polls. One critic said: ‘The trouble with conference was how much powder she blew through. We waited a year for a policy, then in four days we made 37 policy announcements. Chris Philp [the shadow home secretary] managed to announce that our net migration policy would be set below zero – even more radical than Reform’s – without virtually a single newspaper covering it.’ A Badenoch ally responded: ‘We will be coming back to that. There will be a big push on legal migration.’
McInnes has also been tasked with keeping party membership numbers above 100,000. Insiders say this is a ‘daily battle’ because people’s credit card details lapse and few new members are joining. ‘They’re juicing the figures by not chasing people who would usually be removed from the membership roll,’ a source revealed.
Donors paid for two focus groups with 2024 Tory voters who are now leaning towards Reform, conducted on 6 and 9 October. They were played extracts of Badenoch’s conference speech and a TV interview. A note of the groups, circulating among MPs, includes a series of negative quotes about Badenoch: ‘A pretty weak leader’; ‘Just saying what she thinks people want to hear’; ‘Very defensive… and argumentative’; ‘I’ve never heard of her’.
When asked ‘What do you think of the Conservatives?’, one participant replied: ‘Nothing.’ Another said: ‘I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen them on the news.’
One of those who has seen the document compared Badenoch to the dodo: ‘She is a flightless bird who struts around, but her polling is stuck to the floor and contact with real people has proved fatal. She is heading for extinction.’
Relations between Badenoch and Robert Jenrick, her likely successor, remain tense. When Simon Dudley, a party treasurer, organised a gathering for donors at his home in Windsor on 23 October, it is claimed that Badenoch’s allies urged shadow ministers not to attend when they heard Jenrick was the speaker. ‘Half the shadow cabinet had RSVP’d and then pulled out,’ a source said. A shadow minister told the organisers he had withdrawn after ‘orders from above’. One critic said: ‘It shows she is still paranoid and thin-skinned.’ Badenoch’s team denied banning anyone and said it is ‘not usual’ for members of the shadow cabinet to attend an event where another of them is speaking.
Some still criticise her sometimes imperious manner. One female aide was dispatched during the leadership election to search for a shoe Badenoch liked that had sold out seven years earlier. Insiders say she ‘plays her staff off against each other’ and can be ‘very cold’ with senior aides.
Badenoch’s critics claim nothing she tries will work. ‘Ironically, in giving a half-decent speech, she’s made her critics’ points for them,’ one said. ‘Whatever she does now is doomed. Look at Mark Carney in Canada – you can change people’s minds very quickly when you come in, but what you can’t do is change their minds once they’re made up.’
Others argue that Badenoch’s improvement means there would be little to gain from switching to Jenrick. ‘Six months ago Rob looked much more energetic and professional, but Kemi has upped her game,’ says one MP. The shadow cabinet studied polling by Opinium last month that showed underlying metrics improving. In every category, including ‘knows what it stands for’, ‘is competent’, ‘has the country’s best interests at heart’ and ‘has similar views to my own’, the Tories are up three to four points (though voters remain negative overall). A CCHQ official said: ‘People just have to have patience.’
But will they? The question remains – following another expected shellacking in next May’s local, Welsh and Scottish elections – whether Tory MPs can hold their nerve. If they do, some of the outriders agitating privately for Jenrick to take over are likely to peel off and find other work. But if MPs feel they are going nowhere under Badenoch, she will find herself with far more time for the gym and the hairdresser.
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