“Could this,” asked the Telegraph on 19 June, “be the start of a Tory Kemi-naissance?” Camilla Tominey’s column is a little more nuanced than its headline suggests; she has the grace to acknowledge that a similar column about Rishi Sunak, written in May 2024, “aged spectacularly badly”; and if we start mocking columnists just for being publicly and catastrophically wrong, then where will I be?
Nonetheless, since variants of this sentiment are often heard in certain circles at present, and since this one, too, might age spectacularly badly, it seems worth kicking its tyres a bit. Tominey’s hook for her column was the Tory victory in Aberdeen South, the first time the party’s first Scottish by-election win since 1967. The party “also won a handful of council seats back from Reform in Essex,” the writer notes. Well, it’s an argument.
Other commentators on the large but largely invisible bit of the British right that can’t stand Nigel Farage point to other things. Kemi Badenoch’s recent run of good performances at PMQs. Her personal ratings, found by YouGov to be a mere -11: that may not sound great, but it puts her way above her party (-33), above any Tory leader in five years, and above every other party leader so long as you discount both Andy Burnham and Ed Davey. Throw in the torrid summer Nigel Farage is having and, well, surely the large and noisy bit of the electorate that don’t like the Labour Party will be coming home to the Tories any day now. Stands to reason!
Alas, for fans of the world’s most successful political party™, there are some fairly convincing arguments against the idea of the Kemi-naissance, only one of which is about the fact it’s a deeply irritating portmanteau. Leave aside the fact that, under her leadership, the party has made no attempt to account for most of its failures in 14 years of government because, as much as I’d love that to matter, it’s entirely possible it won’t. Stick to stuff that’s not just metropolitan liberal fan fiction.
Consider the extensive foot-in-mouth syndrome which rather belies Badenoch’s 2024 claim to have “never had a gaffe”. About the only moment of last spring’s local election campaign to break through was the one in which she was heard to furiously argue that listeners to BBC Radio Newcastle should be pleased by Tory improvements to buses in Lincolnshire on the fascinating grounds that Lincolnshire “is near the north-east”. Sure. Why not.
Of course, the results of those elections were not great for the party: over 500 councillors lost from an already low base, projected vote share down to 17 per cent. And so, she was asked last week, would the Tories ever go into coalition with Farage’s party? No, replied Kemi, because unlike the Tories, Reform is “woke”. On further interrogation, it turned out Badenoch understands woke-ness not to be a left-right construct but something to do with the politics of grievance. Not content with making up her own definitions of geography, she is now making up her own definitions of words.
All this was a lot more fun than any of the other headlines she generated last week, through her attempts to defend allowing a former neo-Nazi to stand as a Tory council candidate. It is hard to square Badenoch’s handling of the affair with the views she’s about to lead her party back into serious contention as a party of government. Her claim that the Tories “believe in second chances” was an awkward fit with both its criminal justice policies and her frankly vicious comments about Louise Haigh’s spent conviction. Her suggestion that it was fine because he was only going to be a councillor, not a proper politician like an MP, was an awkward fit with keeping her party’s foot soldiers in any way motivated to deliver bloody leaflets.
And all this happened just weeks after the news the party removed the whip from Gavin Barwell, and made clear to Grant Shapps that he would not be welcome to stand again, ostensibly because they are unreconstructed lefties who believe net zero – not so long ago Conservative Party policy – to be a good idea. The notion of the Keminaissance is surely premised on the idea that the Tories can again be the big tent party on the right, attracting not just those voters whose brains have been rotted by X but the much larger group who favour low taxes and a small state, and thus retaking Surrey. That is not the strategy which Badenoch is currently pursuing.
The biggest reason to be cynical about the Keminaissance, though, is the voters. On the same day the party won Aberdeen South, helped on in an oil town by its opposition to net zero, the party came fourth in Makerfield, with barely 2 per cent of the vote. (In 2019 it was second, with 34 per cent.) A few weeks later, in the Greater Manchester mayoral by-election, the Tories came fifth. In both elections, the Tories were overtaken not just by Reform, but by Restore. The world’s most successful right-wing political party keeps being beaten by one very right-wing guy with a Facebook account.
Two years ago, Rishi Sunak led the Conservative Party to its worst ever general election result: 121 seats, on less than 24 per cent of the vote. The party has not hit those heights in national polling in 16 months and counting. We’re all enjoying watching Nigel Farage implode, wokely, I’m sure, and those votes have to go somewhere. Nonetheless, if this is the Keminassiance, I’m the third moon of Jupiter.
[Further reading: Restore voters can’t stomach Nigel Farage]
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Subscribe here to commentAbsolutely on the money, Jonn. I know it’s political silly season, but the notion a Kemi-ship (my contribution to the world of the rubbish portmanteau) is a growing prospect, following an apparently stellar period as LOTO, seems almost entirely based on a few half-decent, open goal, PMQs appearances and the overheated writings of Spectator, UnHerd and Torygraph columnists. Most actual voters still appear stubbornly resistant to this apparently inevitable procession. Another one, almost breathlessly intent on making Kemi ‘happen’, is the supposed ‘progressive’ Blairite, Rentoul.