It is unusual for an actor to decline from the first to the second audition and still be given the part, but anyone who follows British politics will have noticed a similar procession of the mediocre. And if the Conservative Party is to survive the next General Election, it must hope that Kemi Badenoch bucks this trend.
When, three years ago, she put herself forward to be party leader, the impression was of someone callow — and, in person, she was surprisingly bashful — but she did have that vanishingly rare ability to make her followers cheer. There was an electricity in the room.
By the time of her second go, a year ago, things had changed. The atmosphere was staid. Tory journalists, who ought to have been animated, looked on nonplussed. The careerists were lined up on the front row; they, too, displayed little liveliness. Perhaps they were still in shock from the flagellation they had received from the electorate — even though certain Tories are given to that sort of thing. Badenoch tried to coddle them with the sorts of abstractions that usually make Conservative MPs salivate — personal responsibility, citizenship, equality under the law, the family, first principles. She struggled with the autocue. Had the public been listening in, they would have yawned.
Ever since, her polling has gone from bad to hideous. To Badenoch’s credit, she is unfailingly honest — perhaps to fault. She pleads she will get better, yet has slipped into the party’s reverie. Under her leadership, the Tories are displaying the worst instincts of an ancien régime: excessive self-regard and the unwillingness to understand the conditions which have given rise to their downfall.
This much was confirmed by one of her advisers, who reminded me, with remarks which could have been prefaced with “You know, dear boy”, that being leader of the Conservative Party is not like being leader of Reform, that the party has been around for 100 or however many years, that it encompasses local associations, the National Convention, councillors, parish councillors, and people who have been on the scene since the time of Thatcher. “It’s an enormous institution with a very grand history and we do have to look after it.”
Consequently, Badenoch has chosen a decadent strategy: first, reform internal party structures and set up internal policy commissions; then face the public when it is all complete. I know, because I was recently shown the strategy document itself, a management consultant’s breakfast entitled “The 3+5 Plan”. It lists three phases: 2025 is for “rebuilding trust”, 2026 for “demonstrating credibility”, and 2027 for “getting ready”.
The three phases have five objectives. “1. To win the election, 2. To re-build, 3. To compete, 4. To win the trust of the British people (disconnecting from Labour & winning people to us) 5. To jump ahead.” The party wishes “to become a best in class political organisation”. With the replacement of a few words, this could be a strategy for any political party, in any country, in any universe; it does not take into account anything happening in politics now. It gives no indication of what the party stands for.
Badenoch’s public appearances yield similarly little insight. It used to be convention that Leaders of the Opposition would put themselves up for ritual slaughter by the press, and ridicule by some quarters of the public, by taking stances on the main issues of the day. The convention had the obvious benefit of allowing the public to see who you are, who you speak for and how you think, even as it ran the risk of causing convulsions amongst the Adullamites of the party when they realised their policy darlings were going to be killed. Badenoch, however, is pursuing the politics of procrastination — while convincing herself that she is taking the harder road of coming up with policy quietly and methodically.
Meanwhile, politics continues around her. On the same day in June as Nigel Farage held a morning press conference to introduce a quirky policy on non-doms to benefit the poor, Badenoch was at the Policy Exchange think tank for a gentle midday tête-à-tête with Charles Moore about Margaret Thatcher. Throughout the summer, Reform ran a six-week law-and-order campaign, with weekly press conferences; Badenoch, perhaps responding to criticism that she has not been sufficiently visible, furnished us with the facts that she no longer identifies as Nigerian and was a snitch at school.
Behind closed doors, some in Badenoch’s team questioned her silence as far back as December. The Tories, they argued, were essentially allowing Reform to speak for the Right. Others now mutter darkly of her being in thrall to fawning deputies who have turned her into a politician who dutifully reads the lines she is given. (This is denied by her team, who say that “Anyone who knows her well would testify that she is the last sort of person who would just read out anything put in front of them.”) Someone who has worked with her previously describes her as unwilling to hear criticism; her allies, on the other hand, say it is myth she is cliquey, and instead, though being resolute, is open to challenge. The team, buoyed by Badenoch’s Commons performances before recess, is more upbeat than after the local elections catastrophe. At Wednesday’s PMQs, though, the first since the summer break, Badenoch failed to land a decisive blow on Angela Rayner, who has admitted to underpaying stamp duty. Lord Frost, a senior Tory, retweeted a claim that “Tories have their heads in their hands after that performance from Kemi Badenoch”.
Her camp is convinced that all the Tories need is time, and that memories of the Truss mini-budget, and other misadventures, will eventually fade. As one told me, “When the public start going, ‘I don’t like Labour but I’m not sure about Reform’, we need to be ready.” He insists that the public, at this point, will see “that Kemi has done the hard thinking to put the Conservative Party back in the right place”.
It is true, in the normal run of things, that the British people easily forgive; they do not regard political parties as continuous living persons in the way analysts do, and so it can be reasonably assumed a stay-at-home voter will go back to his flock.
However, a dyed-in-the wool voter who switches party is like a monk who decides to fornicate — he ceases to be a monk. Just as it was wrongly assumed that Labour voters who “lent” the Conservative Party support to get Brexit done in 2019 would return to their old habits, Tories who voted for other parties in 2024 are likely to keep indulging in pleasures of the flesh unless a substantially more attractive proposition is offered. Even projecting competence and offering a coherent set of policies is not going to do the trick unless they have already been shown a lot of leg. On all the issues of unique concern — law and order, immigration, deindustrialisation of the British economy — to the 2019 coalition of voters, the only pool from which the Tories could conceivably win a parliamentary majority, Reform is practically tossing garters left right and centre. As deindustrialisation and dispossession deepens, this cohort grows only larger.
“A dyed-in-the wool voter who switches party is like a monk who decides to fornicate — he ceases to be a monk.”
What next? The present predicament of the Tories increasingly resembles the fate of one of Britain’s great country houses — with a modern twist. Its occupants are too foolish to find new sources of income to maintain it, too proud to open it up to the public, and too blind to see that an aggressive developer under the name of Reform 2025 Ltd is about to demolish it and put up newbuilds. They crowd in the one room they can afford to heat, telling themselves comforting tales in denial of the changing world outside. “We understand government”, “It’s too early to say what will happen”, “The Reform lot are a rabble”.
Since the Reform barracks can have no titans of previous generations staring down from gilded portraits — one presumes they might have a few generic prints of the London skyline, as in a city slicker’s flat — the Tories think they are rootless. Yet they are born of a tradition; there is a line of men from Lord Randolph Churchill to Joseph Chamberlain to Enoch Powell who have attempted to dominate the Right by giving vigorous expression to the sentiments which command working-class support. Nigel Farage is but the next. As such, he has a strong whiff of vulgarity for many Tories — and indeed the middle classes.
But in the prevailing conditions, might they hold their noses? Conservatives love to believe that the natural mood of the country is always conservative. Now it is revolutionary. Though the British people may not be able to describe in detail the progressive web of constitutional innovations, human rights and equality legislation and regulatory compliance which is ensnaring all democratic action, they can sense that the practice of governing is characterised by stasis and inertia. They can also see the visible decay of their towns and on social media the sorts of horrors which inspire the most mild-mannered of folks to want to administer brutal punishment.
Farage’s appeal, therefore, cannot be explained alone by his campaigning on immigration. Not discounting fellow-feeling among compatriots, the issue is of little immediate relevance to the pockets of Scotland and the corners of Wales where Reform merrily marches on; pushing it appeals insofar as it marks him as being against the consensus of the other parties. In these Powellian conditions, it follows that Badenoch, however hard it may prove, will have to distinguish herself as being against the consensus in different ways from Farage if she is to have any prospect of power. But with all the careerists in her shadow cabinet, she is paralysed by the perceived necessity for party unity from repudiating all the shibboleths she would like to. The truth-telling pugilist of 2022 is nowhere to be seen. Badenoch now wants to be the standard bearer of the Conservative Party, Farage of the Right itself.
Up to this point, the apparatus has never existed for the British people, having grown exasperated with their politicians, to line up behind the one apparently honest man. Farage is putting it together. His genius lies in the recognition that the lifeblood of any political party is not its membership, campaigning machine, corporate structure, or policy formation process, but popular support in the country. All of these must follow, but are secondary. Having cannibalised the Conservatives’ heart and liver, he is making sure they stay down.
In direct contrast with Badenoch, as he builds his party, in a style wholly unusual to politicians, he gives intelligible progress updates as well as commentary on his foes. Policy is drip-fed, which gives confidence to supporters and keeps the media spotlight on the party. The impression is that while Reform work hard in public, the Tories waste time in private.
Meanwhile, in public, at the dispatch box, the Prime Minister has accused Badenoch of not being a serious politician. This criticism has some accuracy, for she lacks the quality which is necessary for political success above all others: guile.
Political guile can take the form of cunning, boldness, ruthlessness. Not without it could Margaret Thatcher have wrenched her party away from an economic consensus shared with Labour. Guile enabled David Cameron to turn the Tory party from something ossified into something skeletal. Guile enabled Boris Johnson to withdraw the whip from 21 of his MPs despite it leading to the loss of his majority. There is no more visible example that she lacks it than in her tolerance of Robert Jenrick. Gone are the days when the party regarded merely encroaching on another minister’s or spokesman’s brief as being as ungentlemanly as poaching the next man’s pheasants on a shoot. But even in these ungallant times, permitting a fellow shadow cabinet member to openly campaign for the leadership is extraordinary. She claims she wants to change everything “without destabilising my party”. Can she not see that as stab follows back, one naturally follows the other?
For now, though, her position is safe; party rules do not allow a formal challenge until November, and next year’s local elections are likely to deliver further punishment. Knowing this, her rivals consider it too early to strike. But like the king who preceded Robert the Bruce, she has already been mercilessly rendered a Toom Tabard, another forgotten figure in the procession of the mediocre. All that remains to be seen is whether in 50 years’ time her name is the answer to the pub quiz question, “Who was the last leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party?”
