Kemi Badenoch: the three (very difficult) tasks that lie ahead for the new Conservative party leader

After winning the Conservative party’s protracted post-election leadership contest, Kemi Badenoch gave a short, rather downbeat speech. It was not quite “blood, toil, tears and sweat”, but it wasn’t too far off. Badenoch said the tasks in front of the party were “tough but simple”: to oppose and scrutinise the government, tell the truth, and renew. The problem is that these three tasks may be even tougher than the new leader thinks.

When it comes to scrutinising the government, opposition MPs need to be constantly active, asking written and oral questions, leading debates and setting the agenda. They need to be using their power to ask difficult questions and cause problems for the government.

Badenoch acknowledged that her party has “very few MPs” after its election defeat, so can’t stop votes. But, she argued, they could “win the argument”.

It’s true there simply aren’t the numbers. There are only 121 Conservative MPs at Westminster, and they’ll be desperately short on person power. In fact, the numbers are so low the rules on triggering no-confidence votes in the leader are being changed by the 1922 committee – with 15% of the parliamentary party currently required, this means only 19 MPs would need to submit letters to challenge Badenoch, which is hardly a stable state of affairs.

With more than three Labour MPs for every one Conservative, not even counting the 72 Liberal Democrats, the opposition presence in the Commons is a considerably diminished one. The problem is that to “win an argument”, you need to be listened to – and it will be hard to get Tory voices heard above the fray in parliament.

At least Badenoch will have a platform each week at prime minister’s questions (PMQs) – though former leader William Hague found that good performances do not necessarily translate into an uptick in the party’s fortunes. And poor ones can open factional wounds.

Beyond Westminster, to win any argument, the Tories will need to cut through a wave of dislike and disinterest. Broadly, large sections of the public believe the Conservatives won’t win and are, at least for now, largely irrelevant.

A YouGov poll found that 71% of people said they either don’t care very much or don’t care at all about this leadership election. Most think the Conservatives won’t win the next election, with only 8% thinking Badenoch will become prime minister. Even Badenoch herself seemed unsure if she would want to be prime minister in a Sky interview.

And the results of this election proved Badenoch’s own party isn’t enthused either. We learnt as the results were announced that membership has fallen by a quarter, and that only 73% of eligible Conservative party members voted in the contest.

Truth telling

The second key task under Badenoch’s leadership is honesty and truth telling. In order “to be heard”, she argued, the Conservatives have to be honest – “honest about the fact that we made mistakes, honest about the fact that we let standards slip”. She declared, in words that may well come back to haunt her, that “the time has come to tell the truth”.

This too may prove tricky for a party that has shown little appetite to confront the reasons for such a huge defeat. The key question is: tell the truth about what?

The Conservative vote collapsed bcause of two separate events and never recovered; Partygate and Liz Truss. Badenoch needs to find a way to navigate the Boris Johnson-Truss legacy, and present a case to a public who are still deeply unhappy. As of last week, only 25% of voters see the Conservatives “in a favourable light” while two-thirds (67%) “view it unfavourably”.

Badenoch’s task as leader is to reclaim, or somehow renew, the party’s image around both its integrity and competence. Whether this would consist of atoning, acknowledging or moving on isn’t clear. So far, Badenoch has done none of these things, but instead claimed that Partygate, one of the Conservative’s major mistakes in the eyes of voters, was “overblown”.

Renewal

The final and most significant task for the Tories and Badenoch is to renew. This is related to the first two tasks, since without demonstrating competent opposition and engagement with the reasons for the party’s electoral collapse, renewal cannot happen. Here, the key questions are: how do you renew? How do you move a party back to relevance, to regain the public’s attention and (ultimately) your electability?

Badenoch has a reputation as an anti-woke fighter, but her targets are rather inconsistent, to say the least. She has a reputation for triggering fights in unexpected (and unprofitable) directions. Her attack on maternity pay, and her defence of Partygate, are classic examples of assaults that are seriously out of kilter with public opinion. However, her decision not to campaign to leave the European Court of Human Rights is a more sensible decision, given that polling shows the public simply does not see it as a priority.

Will Badenoch’s fights become more strategic? Can they become a route back to the centre ground? Or will they be over fringe issues, at odds with what voters think or care about?

Badenoch could see the renewal project as an opportunity to steer the party back to the centre-right. However, she already appears to have chosen a different path, viewing renewal as an opportunity to reshape the party more formally as a party of the right. This approach is focused on recapturing support that shifted to Reform, and frames the 2024 defeat as being the result of the Conservatives not being conservative enough.

The renewal becomes more difficult since the budget, with Labour busy reshaping the political landscape. Labour’s plans set out a clear challenge for the Conservatives, with tax-raising policies designed to improve public services. Labour is shifting away from the “magic thinking” that voters can have low taxes and first-class public services, and has laid a trap for Badenoch, who has claimed the Conservatives will “take the opposite approach to Labour”.

But what exactly does the “opposite” mean? Will it mean opposing tax rises? And, as Labour claimed, are the Conservatives then against investing in infrastructure and the NHS, the two parts of the budget which the public broadly supports?

These three tasks are formidable for a new leader of a party still reeling from its worst post-war electoral defeat. Being opposition leader is often seen as one of the worst jobs in UK politics – and the Tory party’s recent tendency to regicide may mean this will not be a long tenure.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.