A couple of days ago, during her appearance on Desert Island discs, Kemi Badenoch was asked why she first joined the Conservatives.
It’s a standard question, with a range of boiler-plate answers.
A burning desire to change the world. A yearning to contribute to public service. A need to drive forward a particular political ideology.
‘I joined the Conservative party for the party aspect of it – socialising, drinks, hanging out with other young people,’ she admitted with refreshing candour, adding: ‘And it was amazing, because that’s where I met my husband.’
It’s a response that will have old school grandees spluttering into their Pol Roger.
But as the events of the past week have proven, their party is under new management. And for the first time since the election it is the Tory leader – 15 years younger than Nigel Farage, and 17 years younger than Keir Starmer – who is appearing fresh and distinctive.
Partly that is because of the increasingly bizarre and self-defeating moves of her opponents. Over the weekend, the country saw Starmer retreating back to the 1970s. Beer and sandwiches weren’t on the menu, and smoking was strictly prohibited.
But the spectacle of Labour’s shadowy National Executive Committee assembling behind closed doors to stitch-up the Gorton and Denton by-election – and Andy Burnham in the process – was straight out of a dusty playbook last plucked from the shelf in the Winter of Discontent.
Matt Goodwin, Reform’s candidate for the Gorton and Denton by-election
Former home secretary Suella Braverman, who defected to Reform UK this week
Barely 24 hours later it emerged that Suella Braverman – former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union under Theresa May, former Attorney General under Boris Johnson and former Home Secretary under both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak – had defected to Reform.
Her departure brought to 12 the number of old Conservative cabinet ministers, ministers and whips to have pocketed the Farage Danegeld, to join a party that has only eight sitting MPs and one peer.
The loss of another senior MP would have rattled most traditional leaders. But Kemi Badenoch currently seems to be revelling in her 2026 spring-cleaning.
‘To those that are defecting who don’t actually disagree with our policies, I will say “I’m sorry you didn’t win the leadership contest, I’m sorry you didn’t get a job in the shadow cabinet, I’m sorry you didn’t get into the Lords.
But you are not offering a plan to fix the country, this is a tantrum dressed up as politics,”’ she chided yesterday.
And she’s right. But it’s not just that the trickle of defections to Reform is giving Badenoch the chance to clear out dead wood. It’s giving her the opportunity to recast her party completely in the eyes of the British people.
Anyone who looks at Keir Starmer’s Government can see an administration already scuttled and rusting in the water. It’s as if he’s been in power for 18 years, not 18 months.
Starmer is already out of ideas, out of energy and is scrabbling to keep leadership pretenders at bay. As if the decade-long psychodrama of the Blair/Brown years is being replayed.
But to be fair to the Prime Minister, there’s little he can do now. The difference between blocking Burnham and letting him stand was the equivalent of deciding to leap from a plane without a parachute or leaping from one while clutching a mattress. The result will be the same. And it will not be pleasant.
The real opening for Kemi Badenoch and the Tories is being presented by Nigel Farage. For years, Reform’s leader had the establishment on the run.
His populist insurgency re-wrote the rules of domestic politics. Yet, just at the moment he has Britain’s elite beaten, he seems to have taken the decision to join them. Or at least, co-opt them.
First, there is the ongoing infusion of toxins from the Tory corpse into the previously vigorous body-politic of Reform.
Yesterday, on X, a clip was circulating showing Reform’s leader berating the Conservatives. ‘My message to you is clear, plain and simple. Never trust a Tory. Did you get that? I’ll repeat it. Never trust a Tory. They will always let you down, they will always betray you, Reform UK are the real deal.’
Well yes, many people do get that. And they’re wondering if that’s the case, why is Farage not just trusting the same Tories who spent the past decade running down the country, but welcoming them and giving them senior positions in his shadow cabinet?
Over the past couple of weeks we have a seen a parade of Tory retreads crossing the floor of Parliament. Or more specifically, shuffling a few places to their left on the opposition benches.
And every one has trotted out the same pre-rehearsed line: ‘My old party refuses to take responsibility for what it did in government. They’re gaslighting the voters.’
Fine. But where’s Braverman’s admission of responsibility? Or Jenrick’s? Or Zahawi’s? Their self-serving mantra is always ‘It was nothing to do with me guv. Boris/Liz/Rishi made me do it.’
Then there was yesterday’s surreal spectacle of the unveiling of Reform’s own candidate for the Gorton and Denton by-election.
This will be one of the most vital electoral tests of this parliament. A Reform victory would put rocket boosters under the party, and mark the end for Starmer.
We are told the British people are desperate for change, and increasingly it looks as if it’s Kemi Badenoch who has the hunger to embrace it, Dan Hodges argues
Former justice secretary Robert Jenrick also defected to Reform this month
Mrs Braverman and Nigel Farage after announcing her defection this week
So who did they select? This party whose ranks have supposedly been swollen by 200,000 ordinary grass-roots insurrectionists. A local plumber? A publican? A dinner lady?
No. To contest the working-class Northern seat they opted for Matt Goodwin, a Home Counties-born academic and TV presenter, whose main connection with the area is that he delivered a couple of double pepperonis there as a pizza delivery driver while studying political science at Salford University in the Nineties.
And where was Goodwin’s party leader while his candidacy was being unveiled? In Dubai, with wealthy potential donors.
Following hot on the heels of last week’s trip to Davos, where he was hob-nobbing with the world’s most affluent bankers and businessmen.
Yes, Reform are still ahead in the polls. They have a fighting chance in Gorton.
But they are also now handing Kemi Badenoch and her colleagues a fighting chance nationally. It normally takes years for a party ousted from government to sterilise its brand.
Yet by ushering over former Tory misfits by the busload, Nigel Farage appears intent on bringing out the disinfectant for her.
When the voters are asked to weigh up the two alternatives to Labour, and they see Reform’s ‘new’ line-up of Braverman, Zahawi, Jenrick et al, are they really going to think ‘yeah, that’s the way to turn the page’?
Similarly, when they see a shadow cabinet of Nick Timothy, Laura Trott, Helen Whately, Clair Coutinho, Nigel Huddlestone, Andrew Bowie and Badenoch herself, will they really conclude ‘Look! There are the guilty men and women who wronged us!’
There is still a long way for the Tories to go. For now, Reform remain the easy default option for those who want to give our political class a kicking.
But we are told the British people are desperate for change. And increasingly it looks as if it’s Kemi Badenoch who has the hunger – if not yet the fully formed strategy – to embrace it.
