“People didn’t seem to be getting the message that I was an engineer,” Kemi Badenoch quipped to the overheated room full of MPs and journalists on Tuesday, explaining her decision to hold her speech at the Royal Academy of Engineering, just to hammer the point home. One year and two days into her tenure as leader of the Conservative Party, her joke elicited a round of polite chuckles. But Badenoch was admitting something significant: a year in, most people outside Westminster neither know nor care who or what she is.
This is a big week for Badenoch. Her anniversary as leader marks the point at which she can be challenged by her MPs, who have moved from hope to despondency to despair over the course of her year in office.
Conservatives who once believed – perhaps naively – that the 2024 election result represented the nadir of their electoral fortunes have watched in horror as the party’s polling figures have fallen ever lower, crashing through supposedly solid floors. When Badenoch took over, the party was polling at a steady 25 per cent. A year later, the Conservatives languish at 16 per cent – behind Reform, Labour, and at times even the Liberal Democrats and Greens. Their status as one of the two default parties of government has been shattered, and their role as the main opposition is now in question.
Recovering from a seismic electoral defeat is no easy task, and gaining traction out of government is a challenge all opposition parties grapple with. But Badenoch was meant to be “box office”. She was supposed to have the flair, the audacity, the instinct for making political weather, and the courage to take the fight wherever it was needed – qualities that would ensure the Tories could make an impact in opposition. Instead, she has found it hard to adapt to a political landscape where the media no longer hang on her every word, struggled with briefings, proved ill-prepared for set-piece parliamentary events, missed open goals, and allowed others – namely Nigel Farage and his insurgents in Reform – to seize the narrative.
Most damningly of all, perhaps, she has failed to capture the attention of the electorate. A recent Deltapoll survey found that just 38 per cent of Britons could recognise her in a photograph – compared with 77 per cent for Keir Starmer and 73 per cent for Nigel Farage. Forget not knowing she studied engineering – almost twice as many people can identify the leader of a party with five MPs as can name Kemi Badenoch. And though her favourability ratings are not quite as low as Starmer’s, when asked how they think she is performing, one in five respondents say they simply don’t know. Nothing she has done as leader – the speeches, the interviews, the PMQs attacks, the party conference – has moved the dial. People just aren’t listening.
When under pressure, Badenoch has a tendency to respond with spikiness. Her exchanges with Starmer at PMQs have seen her grow increasingly irate at his habit of dodging questions; she quivers with anger and adrenaline, her tirades across the aisle delivered at such speed that she sometimes trips over her words. When grilled by journalists on subjects for which she is unprepared, her tone turns haughty and scolding.
But at the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Tory leader was a picture of relaxed confidence. Rachel Reeves had helpfully provided the necessary ammunition. The Chancellor had begun the day with a high-risk speech on Britain’s economic predicament, rolling the pitch for the tax rises expected in the Budget later this month; Badenoch was there to offer the counterview. “We are the only party that has ever cared about fiscal responsibility,” she declared, settling into the niche the Tories carved out for themselves at their conference in Manchester last month – somewhere between Labour’s spending, borrowing and potential tax-raising agenda, and the fantastical tax cuts promised by Reform.
It was a speech that could have been delivered by almost any Tory politician – barring Boris Johnson and perhaps Liz Truss – at any point over the past decade and a half. Even the attacks on Reeves, and the mess she created by renting out her house, were less barbed than they might have been. Conservative MPs were not particularly impressed. “I suppose we do have to keep repeating the message,” was the most fulsome praise one could muster. “True but beige,” was the verdict of another.
“Risk aversion is killing us,” Badenoch declared at one point. “The price of avoiding all failure is that we are losing all chance of success.” Ostensibly aimed at the Labour government, she could just as easily have been describing her own speech. There was no risk-taking, no departure from a well-worn script, and little energy.
It’s not that Badenoch has been unwilling to bring the fire to Labour over the past year. From the grooming gangs scandal to the Chagos Islands deal, from revelations over freebies to the China spy case, the opposition has worked hard to ensure government headaches are as painful as possible. Relentless Tory hammering has played a role in the departures of Angela Rayner, over an error with her stamp duty bill, and Peter Mandelson, over his past dealings with Jeffrey Epstein.
The issue is that, while these attacks have undoubtedly damaged Labour, they have done nothing to help the Conservatives. The sharpest, swiftest plummet in popularity for a new government has not been matched by a corresponding revival in the fortunes of the opposition – the opposite, in fact. Labour and the Tories currently struggle to poll above 35 per cent combined. The pendulum shift the Conservatives had counted on has failed to materialise. The pendulum is broken – when the Tories find new ways to undermine Labour, it is Nigel Farage, and more recently Zack Polanski and the Greens, who benefit.
Perhaps that is why Badenoch held back some of her characteristic fire against Reeves in her speech this week, opting for a note of dignified gravity rather than outraged vitriol. Or perhaps she is setting the stage for something else – a reinvention aimed at changing the narrative around the role she has played as leader.
How long does Badenoch have? While a YouGov poll published during the Tory conference last month found that most Conservative members hold a favourable view of her, half do not want her to lead them into the next election. They can take some comfort in the fact that nobody in Westminster seriously expects her to. At various low points in her leadership, furious briefings have circulated about the letters supposedly waiting to be sent to the 1922 Committee by Conservative MPs counting down the days until they can replace her.
That day has now arrived. Yet the tone of Badenoch’s speech lacked the rattled edge of a leader under fire. She seemed content to play the greatest Tory hits rather than issue a rallying call to arms. There was little trace of the woman who, according to Westminster lore, could start a fight in an empty room.
Something has shifted. Something in Badenoch’s relaxed demeanour hinted that an ending has been worked out – a path negotiated for her to step down gracefully rather than face the messy psychodrama of a party defenestration. The obvious timing would be after the local, Scottish and Welsh elections in May, when the Tories are expected to suffer another wave of losses. The one consolation is that Labour’s picture is as bad, if not worse. In the post-election carnage, while questions will inevitably rage over Keir Starmer’s future and Labour battles with itself, there may be an opportunity for Badenoch to make a dignified exit. She can claim to have stabilised the Conservative Party’s finances and rescued it from freefall, repositioning it as the party of sound economic principles in contrast to Labour and Reform. The polling nosedive suffered by the Tories after her appointment as leader will be largely forgotten. The resulting leadership contest will be vicious and chaotic, but less so than it might have been had Badenoch tried to keep fighting, and the damage will be mitigated by the equivalent turmoil within Labour.
All of this is pure speculation. It could be that Badenoch, once so supremely confident in her own abilities that she claimed never to make gaffes, has no intention of going anywhere. It could be that she believes her conference speech – well-received by the party faithful and regarded as having helped solidify the Conservatives’ offering – has done enough to quell voices of disquiet. Or it could be that she takes the view that, while most of the country has no idea who she is, those jostling in the wings to take over are even less well known.
But if that is the case, a fresh round of bloody infighting – something all factions of the party are determined to avoid – now looks inevitable. Minutes after Badenoch delivered her speech, the latest YouGov poll was published: not only are the Tories stuck on 16 per cent, but they are now tied with the Greens, and just one point ahead of the Lib Dems. The pendulum is broken, and Tory strategy needs to reflect that. Badenoch was elected by members in the hope that she would be the party’s crusader. A year into the job, the best she can hope for is to reinvent herself as its caretaker.
[Further reading: Kemi Badenoch isn’t working]
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