QUENTIN LETTS: Mrs Badenoch was perkier than usual. Does she finally glimpse hope?

Daily Mail​

21 hours ago

Does Kemi Badenoch finally glimpse hope? The rotten economic growth figures were published shortly before she made a speech in the City of London.
By that time the nation had been subjected to downbeat verdicts on the government's spending splurge and to the sight and sound of Rachel Reeves on the breakfast airwaves. Captain of sinking pedalo urges passengers not to abandon ship.
Mrs Badenoch strolled into the low-ceilinged, implausibly-chandeliered function room of one of those modern hotels on the edge of the Square Mile. The event was the FTSE 250+ conference, an assembly of 'key risk-takers' seeking 'sharp perspectives from the front lines of our turbulent, opportunity-rich markets'. A fruit-juice-and-Danish-pastries affair.
The session was chaired by an economist, Kallum Pickering, who bluntly told the Tory leader 'we're all a bit grumpy'. Skinny, bearded Kallum explained that the audience – youthful, cologned – felt 'like a stalled engine but with a bit of clear road we could be pumping pistons'. He was resentful of political embuggeration and did not exonerate the last Tory government. Kemi rather agreed with him. She thought Net Zero targets were nuts.
She was at ease with these people. It was an easier gig for her, say, than a hall full of public sector workers. She recalled her own City days when she came to 'loathe compliance culture'. The room warmed to that. These were people whose lives are made a misery by human-resources nags.
She attacked big corporate outfits that 'profited from bureaucracy'. Did she mean the 'big four' accountancy firms? The audience had not expected her to swipe at their bigger rivals. It gave a purr of approval.
Time and again she attacked the 'bloated' state and a Labour cabinet that lacked business experience. A mention of Ms Reeves's fictitious curriculum vitae earned a laugh.
Nigel Farage's lot wanted to nationalise industries, keep big benefit bills yet loosen tax bands. 'It's a scam. It's my job to expose this stuff. These are not serious people.'
Kallum stroked his beard and pointed out that Reform was ahead in the opinion polls, with the Tories trailing in third place, a distant Austin Allegro with smoke billowing from its bonnet.
Kemi: 'We have four years of Labour. From the way people are discussing the opinion polls you'd think there was an election next year. We have to tell people the truth.'
Just before Christmas she had spoken to the Canadian Tory leader Pierre Poilievre, who at that point had a 23-point lead in the opinion polls. He has since lost both an election and his parliamentary seat. Things changed fast.
Mrs Badenoch can be a dull performer. This time she was perkier. Maybe it was because she could say wonkish things and know that the audience would follow. Maybe it was because of 'events'.
In the past fortnight Reform has had internal squabbles and taken a peculiar turn leftwards economically, while taking an anti-liberty step towards a burka ban. Has Mr Farage sacrificed both his authenticity and his cheerfulness?
Then came Wednesday's spending review, with its mad billions and the inevitability of tax rises. Dreadful for the country but possibly a reprieve for Mrs Badenoch's Tories.
'It's going to be a revolution,' she said of her plans, breezily. 'We need to unleash animal spirits.' Animal spirits! Helen Whately, shadow welfare secretary, is more mouse than lion.
Kemi feared 'the bond vigilantes' were circling over Ms Reeves. The Government's economic policy was 'in a death spiral' and this created a gap for the centre-right. 'That is the space I fill.'
Coolly informal, she addressed them conversationally, more a colleague than a would-be political leader. 'I'm on your side,' she cooed, 'but I need you to be on mine, too.' She implored them to 'speak up' and 'tell your customers to speak up, too'. Was that a gurgling 'help, I'm drowning'? Or was it a sense, at last, that her refusal to panic in recent months might finally start to produce buds of a political recovery?