At the start of the weekend there was an outburst of rejoicing among Tory activists – not something they have been accustomed to in recent years.
A single opinion poll suggested the Conservatives are now in the lead. Sure, the party is only scoring 29 per cent of the total vote, a microscopic one point ahead of Labour. But it’s at least a start.
The Tories took an absolute shellacking at the last election but it doesn’t appear that the party is in a death spiral. It may have been unthinkable in the wake of July’s thrashing at the polls, but Kemi Badenoch starts with that most valuable of political commodities – a surprising dose of optimism.
But the scale of the task facing her is truly awesome. She has an immediate priority and three colossal, longer-term challenges.
First on the to-do list is to bring back something that has been thoroughly lost over recent years – party unity. This will require two key skills that perhaps push in opposite directions.
On the one hand, Kemi needs to be a healer. She needs to soothe, listen and bring together a political movement that has too often prioritised backbiting and internal warfare over presenting an appealing proposition to the electorate.
On the other hand, she can’t pull together people in a common endeavour by simply splitting the difference between the policy priorities of every different faction. Clarity of vision may put some noses out of joint but cannot be ducked. This mission – restoring party discipline and then leading it decisively – needs to start now.
But that’s just the beginning. Over the coming years, the challenges facing Kemi are even more complex. The Tories lost two-thirds of their seats at the last election, but this has been part of a worrying, longer, wider trend.
In the leadership contest of 2001, over a quarter of a million party members cast a vote. This had dwindled to under 150,000 when Liz Truss beat Rishi Sunak two years ago. This weekend, fewer than 100,000 ballots were cast. This means Conservative membership has fallen to little more than that of the Liberal Democrats or Reform UK. In equivalent terms, that’s like Manchester United having the same number of season ticket holders as Leyton Orient.
So, Kemi Badenoch needs to launch a major recruitment drive by treating rank-and-file members with respect, giving them more power over policy, party machinery and candidate selection.
If membership doesn’t double by 2029, it will be incredibly difficult to win the next general election.
Second – although it may sound extraordinary to say so after such a pasting in July’s general election – Kemi must avoid complacency. There may be a temptation to say and do very little and simply sit back and watch the Labour government continue to implode.
This was basically the strategy that Keir Starmer followed for years – don’t frighten the horses and hope that the public will get so sick of the incumbent administration that you win by default.
This would be a mistake. You might end up in government but with little clue as to what to do when you get there.
Over the course of the leadership campaign, Kemi was determined to stick to a broad vision of “renewal” rather than making specific policy pledges. But in the coming months, this overarching theme needs to be filled out with specific policy pledges. Are we going to stay in the European Convention on Human Rights or leave? Will we stick to the absurd expense of Carbon Net Zero or abandon it? Are we merely going to trim a little of the waste and inefficiency of the Whitehall bureaucracy or totally overhaul the system?
Inch by inch, the Badenoch-led Tory party needs to embrace a clear policy agenda to reset completely the way government operates in Britain.
Finally, Nigel Farage looms large. Calls for some formal arrangement between the two parties of the right will continue to grow if Reform performs well in opinion polls, by-elections and picks up more seats in local government.
Nothing will happen quickly here, nor should it. There will be two or three years of shadow boxing first. But lines of communication to Reform need to be established and kept open.
Therein lies Kemi’s challenge. Unite the party with a clear vision, completely rebuild the grassroots machine, develop a policy plan to reset Britain’s constitution and develop a strategy to win over Reform.
If she can pull that off then Kemi Badenoch isn’t just the new leader of the Tory party, she is our next Prime Minister.
