Leadership Speculation to Dominate
The noise in run-up to this year’s Conservative Party Conference has been centred on Kemi Badenoch’s ailing leadership. Having been elected party leader just under a year ago, Badenoch has so far failed to turn around the party’s fortunes. The most recent polling average puts the Conservatives on just 18%, lower than the party’s vote share in July 2024, its worst ever general election performance.
This has led some within the Conservative family to conclude that the party is in a fight not only for relevance – but for its very survival.
This year’s conference in Manchester will be dominated by speculation about Badenoch’s leadership: how long does she have left to turn things around, and who are the potential candidates to replace her? Until she can convince her party’s activists that she is the right person to lead the Conservatives into the next election, Badenoch will continue to struggle to be seen as a realistic prospect to be a future prime minister.
This conference represents a crucial moment for her leadership. Her challenge is to convince the party’s disgruntled and increasingly impatient MPs and grassroots members that she deserves more time to turn things around.
Reform a More Immediate Opponent than Labour
Just as it was at Labour’s conference in Liverpool last week, the question of how to combat Reform UK’s political insurgency will be paramount in Manchester. The Conservatives were notably absent from Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s keynote speech in Liverpool; a few days earlier he briefly referred to them as “basically dead”.
Starmer’s assessment, while part of Labour’s wider political strategy, nevertheless mirrors the fears of many Conservatives about their party’s future. Even the most optimistic among them are likely to accept that there is no credible route back to power without reclaiming a significant share of Reform’s current support.
A ‘Red Meat’ Policy Platform
Few voters are currently listening to anything the Conservative Party has to say. Yet many of its activists are demanding clarity over the party’s policy direction. Having delayed the publication of the conclusions of her Policy Renewal Commission until conference, Badenoch has put herself under pressure to make the wait worthwhile.
A pre-conference announcement of a commitment to scrap the Climate Change Act is a prelude of what to expect from Badenoch’s outline policy platform. Other conference crowd-pleasing and headline-grabbing ‘red meat’ policies on law and order and membership of the European Court of Human Rights are likely to follow.
While on social issues the Conservatives and Reform will be in similar territory, Badenoch will seek to emphasise that her party offers more than Nigel Farage’s soundbites and has thought through the detail of how to implement its policies.
On the economy, the Conservatives will seek to label Reform and Labour as two sides of the same coin: addicts of high taxation, high spending and high borrowing. Badenoch and her shadow chancellor Mel Stride will position the Conservative economic approach as uniquely offering the only route out of a cycle of high taxation and low growth.
Whether this outline policy platform will be enough to convince Conservative critics that Badenoch is on the right path remains to be seen. But even if an impressive conference speech proves enough to shore up her position in the short-term, ultimately it will be the cold numbers of polling and local election results that will decide her fate. With a swathe of local council and regional mayoral elections looming next May, Badenoch is fast running out of time to show she can deliver an upturn in Conservative fortunes.
