It was the result many had predicted following the General Election in July and, further back than that, almost as soon as Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister; but Kemi Badenoch’s route to the Conservative Party leadership has been far from straightforward.
She scraped through the final round of MPs’ votes: a narrow victory over relative outsider Robert Jenrick, who will feel confident that the political winds of the British right are shifting towards the agenda he set out; with a focus on migration; law and order; and social cohesion.
But as just over half of the Party’s members and fewer than half its MPs wanted to see her become leader, her first challenge is to bring them all along on a radical political transformation, which will be no simple task.
Badenoch’s analysis of the Conservatives’ failure in office is distilled in her much-used phrase: “we talked right but governed left.” That diagnosis is certainly not universally accepted across the Party, but she’ll be hoping that a desire for unity, which is universally shared, will overcome colleagues’ reservations. Equally, she will hope that late endorsements from One Nation stalwarts such as Damian Green mean she is as much their candidate as the right’s.
This is reflected in her shadow cabinet appointments; picking Mel Stride to be Shadow Chancellor and Priti Patel Shadow to Foreign Secretary show that her top team are drawn from all wings of the Party. Robert Jenrick as Shadow Justice Secretary is as magnanimous as could reasonably be expected, giving him a platform to continue his hardline crusade on law and order.
Nevertheless, loyalists Julia Lopez (Parliamentary Private Secretary) and Alex Burghart (Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster) will be the most trusted sources of counsel amongst Badenoch’s shadow team.
While reunification is the first order of business, it’s a task being led by perhaps the most polarising Conservative in Parliament. It’s a title most recently held by Boris Johnson; who upon becoming leader had to prove himself as a winner to inspire loyalty. His experience is a cautionary tale for Badenoch in how quickly such transactional loyalty can evaporate once your perception goes from electoral asset to liability. That makes the local elections in May a pressure point for Badenoch.
While much of Badenoch’s initial focus will be on her own Party, she will also need to prove herself effective in Opposition – Labour’s shaky start to office means expectations are high for her to hit the ground running. This also includes eating into Reform’s vote, which is now just a few percentage points behind the Conservatives. But none of this is without danger: taking the Party to the right and failing to weaken Reform will strengthen the hand of Centrists arguing for a more measured approach aimed at winning back Labour and Lib Dem voters.
Badenoch is a paradox: where her detractors see flaws, her supporters see virtues. Unpolished, unscripted, authentic – a conviction politician? Or abrasive and obstinate and prone to unforced errors? Whatever the truth, she views politics as a battle of ideas rather than a process of building consensus; drawing a contrast with a ‘managerialist’ approach she believes the Conservatives prioritised in office which valued compromise over defending the Party’s core principles.
This explains why Badenoch resisted calls to set out a clear policy agenda during the contest. She believes the starting point of the Conservative rebuild is principles not policies.
