With the election of Kemi Badenoch, John Harris writes, the gap between Labour and Conservative diagnoses of Britain’s ills could hardly be larger: “The UK seems to be moving towards a politics that simultaneously happens on two different planets.” In Badenoch’s view, as set out in a pamphlet (pdf) published by her campaign, the country is being hamstrung by a swollen bureaucracy which is obsessed with identity politics. In theory, the choice on offer to voters versus the programme set out by Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves last week should be a clear one.
But Badenoch has not really fleshed that out – and she has a lot to do besides staking out her political territory on the right. Here are some of the key challenges as she becomes Tory leader.
Come up with a credible diagnosis of what went wrong
The theory of a long leadership contest was that it would provide the space for a serious reckoning with the scale of the electoral defeat. That’s not what happened in practice, Henry said. “Partly that was because the party so much wanted to avoid a repeat of 2022, with Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak hammering each other in public for months.”
To that end, the 1922 Committee instituted a “yellow card” system where any candidate who attacked a rival would be given a public dressing down by chair Bob Blackman. “But realistically, ‘blue on blue’ attacks would be how scrutiny happened,” Henry said.
In this piece on Friday, Henry wrote that Badenoch’s attempt at a pithy analysis of the party’s failure – that it “talked right, but governed left” was “a fine description of a symptom, but … falls short of a diagnosis; we’ve heard nothing about why this was, or what ‘governing right’ would look like under a Badenoch premiership”.
The result of this gap is that in her first interview as leader, with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg yesterday (on which she appeared with Reeves, pictured above), she was asked more about her predecessors than about her criticisms of Labour. “If you want to turn the page you need a credible explanation of what went wrong,” Henry said. “And she doesn’t seem to have one yet.”
Flesh out her agenda and take the fight to Labour
Badenoch’s campaign was distinguished from her rival Robert Jenrick’s by the fact that, while she has been viewed as occupying similar territory on the right, she sought to present herself as a figure with at least some appeal to the party’s more moderate wing: calling his pledge to leave the European convention on human rights a “distraction from bigger worries”, for example.
She has also said that she will “lead by consensus”. Which sounds fine, obviously – but, said Henry, “she submarined her way through this contest. The problem is that there is no consensus about the party’s direction”. The ECHR is a case in point.
During the campaign, Badenoch declined to lay out a policy programme, saying to ConservativeHome: “there’s going to be an internal party policy review if I do win, but there’s also going to be a second track of just being a good opposition.”
In her Kuenssberg interview, she promised to tell “hard truths”, and she had one particularly bracing observation: “as a country we are getting poorer and older”. That might be the kernel of a coherent Conservative attack on the affordability of Labour’s plans, but it’s not exactly an optimistic message, and because she didn’t lay out the detail during the campaign, many of her supporters may not quite have understood what they’ve signed up for.
Assemble a plausible team
Badenoch started to assemble her shadow cabinet last night with the appointment of Rebecca Harris as chief whip. But the electoral defeat was so heavy that by the time she’s finished, the frontbenches may be busier than the back ones. As Peter Walker points out in this analysis, there are 124 Labour MPs with government jobs – which is more than the total number of Tories returned to parliament.
“You arguably only need people in key positions,” Henry said, because so much of the job of opposition is appearing in the media. “But the result does mean that there is potentially a talent issue. She won’t be able to afford many resignations, and the shadow cabinet will have to be a broad church.”
Its members will know that it is hard for her to get rid of them, and they will hail from all wings of the party – which may make enforcing any sweeping changes to the party’s platform a serious challenge. Also, other than semi-retired grandees and the class of 2024, anyone who doesn’t get in when the field is so thin is likely to be seriously cheesed off.
Revitalise the party
One worrying feature of the leadership contest for the Conservatives: the size of the electorate. Just 95,849 people voted, against 141,725 in 2022 and 256,857 back in 2001: that change is a result of a long-term decline in membership, and a fair number of party members being less fussed about choosing a leader of the opposition than a prime minister.
The decline in party identification is not just a Conservative problem – but its membership does skew older, and so the question is a more urgent one.
“We’re not really a society that joins things much any more,” said Henry. “But the party needs activists – crucially, it needs those more than it needs headline membership. It needs people who’ll actually campaign, collect data, organise.”
In her ConservativeHome interview, Badenoch said there was a “unique opportunity to turn our party into a mass membership organisation … that attracts people of all ages.” But she was short on specifics about how, saying it would need a lot of “deep thinking” and consultation. Figuring this out should “absolutely be a priority”, Henry said, along with reforming CCHQ.
Lose her reputation for combustibility
When Badenoch’s campaign did get the headlines, it wasn’t for ideal reasons: her most high profile intervention was her suggestion that maternity pay is “excessive”. Just as notable was the way she reacted to coverage: she denied saying something which most fair-minded observers thought she clearly did, and added: “I don’t shy from difficult topics, but I won’t be misrepresented.”
Badenoch has a bit of a record of this sort of thing, and a reputation for picking fights with no discernible political benefit. Is she too abrasive to be a successful leader? “We’ll have to see,” Henry said. “There’s definitely been concern about her historic lack of enthusiasm for media, given that Leader of the opposition is in large part a media role.” If Labour descends into civil war over the next few years, he pointed out, it may be more effective to stay above the fray – especially as “voters have Reform and the Lib Dems to consider if they reach 2029 unhappy with the government”.
A related problem: “There are also party management implications for someone not having or building a large number of personal loyalists, as we’ve seen before.” The question of what voters will think of her is obviously crucial, in other words – but there are many mountains to climb before that one.
