Addressing a surprisingly upbeat Conservative conference in Birmingham, Kemi Badenoch sounded confident: “When we win the next election, and we will, we are going to need to hit the ground running.”
But behind the public optimism is the blunt reality that the Tories are on the ropes electorally and miles from power. The party is currently third in opinion polls on 20 per cent — below their 23.7 per cent in the 2024 general election catastrophe.
They need to take on Nigel Farage’s rightwing Reform UK and win back soft Tories who have switched to the centrist Liberal Democrats. Or as one shadow cabinet member put it: “When you look at the charts, you think: ‘bloody hell, how on earth are we going to win a majority?’”.
An improvement in Badenoch’s personal approval ratings has suffused the Tory conference in what another shadow cabinet member called a mood of “cautious optimism”.
But so far the Tory leader’s self-proclaimed “Kemistry” has failed to revive her party, which won just 121 seats at the last election. The party needs to gain at least 200 more to win a Commons majority.
As Dylan Difford of the pollsters YouGov noted this month: “The Tories suffered devastating losses in this year’s local and devolved elections, have lost their deposit in two of the four parliamentary by-elections this year, and remain significantly below their 2024 vote share in voting intention polls.”
One of the key problems facing Badenoch’s party is that it is fighting on what appear to be two completely different fronts, with the risk that policies aimed at one group of voters can alienate a different target group.
Another shadow cabinet member said the Tories should be targeting a swath of seats won by the Liberal Democrats in 2024, largely in southern England. The Lib Dems won 72 seats at the last election, largely at the Tories’ expense.
“There are 60 Lib Dem seats that would ordinarily be Tory,” they said, citing solidly middle-class places like Henley, Esher, Guildford and Tunbridge Wells. Most Tories believe that Badenoch’s path to power must run through such places.
Party strategists believe that to win back such seats the focus must be on the economy, with a core message of welfare cuts funding tax cuts. “We need to talk about the economy, then talk about the economy, then talk about the economy,” said one party official.
Badenoch’s big announcement going into the conference was the removal of the £100,000 childcare tax cliff edge, along with assertions that it would be “morally right” to cut inheritance tax, paid by around 5 per cent of all estates.
On Monday Andrew Griffith, shadow chancellor, promised to scrap the Labour government’s planned “mansion tax” on homes worth more than £2mn and declared an “aspiration” to reform the tax system to end the 60 per cent marginal tax rate on earnings between £100,000 and £125,140.
These policies will play well in former Tory heartlands but will have little financial impact on the former working-class Tory voters the party lost to Reform, some of whom might have bridled at Badenoch’s policy that millionaires should be entitled to free childcare.
Inevitably this party conference is focused on the risk posed by Farage, who has said he wants to “destroy” the Conservatives.
While Tory strategists agree that the economy is the key issue for all voters, Badenoch has also struck tough messages aimed at Reform-minded voters but which risk alienating former “One Nation” Tory voters in the affluent south.
The Tory leader has banned aspiring MPs from standing as candidates if they support the 2050 net zero target — legislated for by former Tory premier Theresa May — or if they endorse the European Convention on Human Rights, championed by Winston Churchill.
Kemi Badenoch opens the Conservative party conference vowing to win the next election
The party is also taking strong positions on migration and would reverse any modest efforts by Labour to “reset” relations with the EU at a forthcoming summit, even if that means reimposing trade barriers for food exports. Brexit remains an article of faith.
None of these policies seems guaranteed to win back the support of moderate former Tories who switched to the Lib Dems in 2024, and some Badenoch allies admit that the party should stick to its core economic message.
One party strategist said: “If you look at the Tory voters who went to the Lib Dems in 2024, we think the tax issue is starting to win those people back.”
Alex Burghart, Badenoch’s deputy, argued a robust economic message could win back both sets of voters. “The economic message is one that actually reaches all over the country and in all sorts of demographics, and is the right place for the Conservative Party to be,” he told a fringe event on Monday.
Badenoch has ruled out doing a deal with Farage — either before or after a general election — but with the vote on the right badly split, her route to Downing Street is hard to discern.
Her allies speak fondly that “if we could only be consistently ahead of Reform by one or two points” in the polls, then Farage would stop looking like a viable alternative prime minister and the Tories could then gain momentum. That remains the party’s goal at this conference.
Badenoch, speaking at a fringe meeting on Sunday night, said the party’s electoral prospects could be tested sooner than many think.
“I do believe that Andy Burnham is going to call an early general election,” she said at a Tory welcoming reception hosted by the Tory peer and pollster Lord Michael Ashcroft.
Referring to Rishi Sunak’s ill-fated decision to call a snap poll in 2024, she said: “The last time we had a general election we managed to surprise ourselves. We’re not doing that again. I am going to be ready for a general election.”
Ashcroft told assembled Tories that the public seemed to be warming to Badenoch but then added the painful kicker: “Unfortunately their view of the Conservative Party is taking a bit longer to catch up. In other words, voters like her — they’re just not convinced about the rest of you.”