The problem isn't Kemi, it's the Tory Party

Telegraph

21-05-2025

The knives are out for Kemi Badenoch following a recent poll that put the Conservatives in a dismal fourth place behind the Liberal Democrats. It is perfectly natural that politicians of whatever party consider who might be best placed to maximise the number of seats their party might win at the next election and therefore maximise the number of votes they themselves might secure at the ballot box. So far, so logical.
But this is where the Conservative Party starts to lose its bearings and, frankly, its senses. It all began with Margaret Thatcher. It was she who started off this modern Tory fashion for challenging incumbent leaders. Until 1975, nothing of the sort had ever happened before, but only because the mechanism for electing leaders in the first place had only been in existence for a decade.
The oldest and most successful political party in the world had only introduced election for its leaders in 1965, and it is perhaps significant that the first elected leader of the party – Edward Heath – was also the first leader to have been usurped from that position by a rival.
And the period of relative peace between Thatcher and her back benches from 1975 until 1989 was only ensured by the three consecutive general election victories she delivered, an element which Badenoch does not have at her disposal.
The party's MPs have grown used, since the late 1980s, to leadership challenges and changes, but few would conclude that a system that even allows for such challenges to destabilise successive governments can have had a positive impact on its electoral appeal. The idiocy of switching leaders so frequently seems to have become almost instinctive among Tory MPs, and certainly expected by a ravenous media.
The Conservatives now behave like one of Pavlov's dogs, pressing a paw down on the button marked 'vote of confidence' whenever it hears the bell signalling a disappointing polling result. Might it not make more sense for the party – particularly its MPs, who have the sole power to trigger a leadership election – to consider a few other factors rather than obsess about the short-term fluctuations of voters' opinions?
First, where is the stock-take of the Tories' 14 years in office? Has anyone even dared to suggest where things might have gone wrong, what actions and policies have earned them the disdain of the electorate which resulted in their humiliation last July?
Second, once such a stock-take has been completed and conclusions drawn, what should the party now be for? What is its aim? What kind of country does it want to shape, to lead? What are its priorities? And how should it deal with Reform? As far as can be seen so far, none of these questions has been answered, nor has any attempt been made to atone for the disastrous record of the 2010-2024 Government.
Third, who could replace Badenoch? It is not enough to moan about the success, or lack thereof, of the incumbent. Labour MPs did that, fruitlessly, in the last two years of Gordon Brown's premiership, but in the absence of someone willing to stand as an alternative, the 'rebellion' against him never stood a chance.
Where is the alternative to Badenoch and, more urgently, why does he believe he would do any better than she? What unique perspective would he bring to the leadership that Badenoch has set her face against? Where is the polling evidence that he (or, conceivably, she) would be significantly more popular and inspiring than what the party already has?
Such a candidate should have to demonstrate that another change in leadership in his favour would generate more than a mere handful of percentage points added to the Conservatives' current disastrous polling.
But there is an alternative analysis: Badenoch, or indeed any potential leader, is not the problem. The problem is the party itself. Having become comfortable as the only centre-Right alternative to the Labour Party, the Tories fell into the old Harold Wilson trap of assuming that conservatism was whatever a Conservative government did.
Record immigration? Record high taxation? Unprecedented interference in individuals' lifestyle choices? The unleashing of gender ideology across the civil service and the public sector? By conventional assessment, none of it was 'conservative'. But it was certainly Conservative, because it all happened under that party's watch.
Was that record a giant, unintended mistake? Or was it all unavoidable, with ministers in Whitehall unable to escape their civil servants' influence? If the latter is the case, then perhaps the Tories are, after all, better consigned to history. They had a good run, they played an essential role in the political and societal development of this nation, but their time has come to an end.
If the former, if mistakes made can be admitted, apologised for and new policy solutions developed that will repair the damage, then maybe – and it's a huge maybe – the voters will one day give them another chance to make amends.
In which case, the replacement of Badenoch will make zero difference to the task the Conservatives have before them. Another leadership challenge, another vote by permanently disgruntled party members, will be seen, accurately, as just another spasm of self-interest, the indulgence of a party that has come to the end of its useful existence.