Three months ago, I took to this magazine to call for Badenoch to go.
Since, two other colleagues have added their throats to the chorus, calling for her to be replaced with Robert Jenrick. Rumours are also swirling that James Cleverly is starting up on manoeuvres, too. If I’m being honest, my panic has become so existential that I don’t really care who comes next — only that they arrive soon.
Because if Kemi Badenoch is not replaced as leader within a year, it doesn’t matter who is next; there will be nothing to inherit. The Conservative Party will cease to exist, cease to function and cease to matter.
If we move now, we are responding to the local elections. And what a set of elections to respond to! Fourth in national share projections, 10 per cent worse than the previous Conservative vote share ever in a local election. Every Conservative-controlled council lost, along with nearly 700 councillors. Were this a Parliamentary election, we would have been reduced to 12 seats.
Kemi has been out to say our problems are “not going to be fixed after six months”. This is factually correct. But given that there was an election less than a year ago in which we won ten times that number of seats, it is also factually correct to say things have grown worse under her leadership.
She’s cautioned against a knee-jerk response. But a knee-jerk response would have been far better than no reaction. Reportedly, she spent the day after the elections doomscrolling — emphasis, presumably, on doom.
The only comparably poor election result was the 2019 Europeans, when we won just 9 per cent and came fifth. What happened after this? Theresa May was replaced with Boris Johnson. Eight months later, we won the 2019 General Election and the highest vote share for 50 years. I am obviously not arguing these conditions are replicable — or that Boris Johnson is the solution to our problems — but it does no favours for the idea that changing a leader doesn’t change things quickly.
Following that election, the talk of replacing Theresa — voluntarily or otherwise — was feverish. She couldn’t go on; the chaps wouldn’t have her, to coin a phrase. There have been calls for Badenoch to go, but the atmosphere seems less… tempestuous. This is not a good sign. The relative calm is a sign of despair, not hope. Will Atkinson has written that “in the Starmer vs Farage show, she is an irrelevance.” Her irrelevance is ours; who leads the party is an increasingly low-stakes game. It just doesn’t matter like it used to.
The silence isn’t one of contentment; it’s one of contempt
Obviously, this is the natural product of being in opposition and not in Government. But it’s also because there is now an alternative — an alternative who have just doubled our vote share in a national election, by the way. We aren’t hearing clamours for her to be replaced because many of those most concerned with the future of the party — members, donors, activists, voters — have already left for Reform. The silence isn’t one of contentment; it’s one of contempt.
This has a secondary effect. Not only were these people right about the need to shift us rightwards, but they were also among the most vocal and critical voices pushing back against the party’s drift towards the centre. In groups I’m in, in reaction to this result, I have seen the most horrific examples of electorate-hostile centrist liberal elitism I’ve seen since Brexit;
- Comparisons to 1933
- The electorate have learned nothing about voting for change’s sake after electing Labour
- Reform now have to run things but won’t be able to
- Now is the time to keep quiet and remain pragmatic
- We can’t out-Reform Reform, and shouldn’t try
Reform pulling away our right flank means increasingly few voices are pushing back against this. We will drift further and further away from the voters, a process that will not just be political but geographic; there are elections across 149 councils next year. If this year’s results are repeated and we are wiped out on council after council, we will lose our foothold in the very places that once defined us. Towns we used to win without thinking now have no Conservative councillors at all. Whole counties will turn teal, constituency associations will fold, local activists will give up or defect.
Vacating the map like this will have huge consequences. When you’re not present on the ground, you don’t hear the voters. You don’t understand their priorities, their anger, their instincts. And in turn, they stop recognising you as their voice in national life. They look elsewhere —- and now, as I’ve already said, there is an elsewhere. As we retreat into a handful of rural shires and marginal commuter seats, we stop being a national party and we become a minoritarian rump.
Somebody has compared Badenoch’s leadership to the Titanic. This is a tempting metaphor, but an incorrect one. The Titanic went down powering full speed ahead, and the lights stayed on until the very end. This feels more like the Ancient Mariner.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Kemi’s leadership so far has been characterised by a great deficiency, in every regard; of energy, of seriousness, of any real political intent. This would be far more forgivable if it felt like she was even trying. As far as one can tell, she doesn’t want the job, doesn’t enjoy the job, and certainly doesn’t intend to actually do it.
In my last piece, I argued that she carries herself with the petulant entitlement of someone who’s been told she’s special her whole life. Increasingly, I feel like she resents the burden of having to prove it. She has never been told she is incompetent, and this has bred an arrogance so deeply-set that the burden of effort that comes with being LOTO is treated like an imposition on her obvious brilliance.
She speaks often of “getting it” but hasn’t yet shown signs of understanding what “it” even is, let alone putting it right. She has no agenda, no faction, no cut through; just the imaginary brilliance her supporters projected onto her and a personality brand that is curdling with exposure.
The problem with staying the course is that the direction of travel under Kemi is clear, and it’s backwards. If this is not a time to panic, when is that time? This is not walking towards the guns, this is the Griondins singing La Marseillaise as they’re led to the guillotine. If we don’t act soon, there will be no path back. The base will be gone. The voters will be gone. The country will be gone. And so will we. Badenoch doesn’t need more time; she needs to be replaced.
