‘It's Liz Truss territory': how bad are things for Kemi Badenoch?
Around 5 p.m. on Monday one of Kemi Badenoch's aides was having a drink with a friend in the Two Chairmen pub in Westminster. Over a pint of IPA he explained how the Conservative leader was planning to thrust herself more forcefully into the public conversation. 'We know the pace needs to quicken,' he admitted. 'Reform are sucking up the political oxygen.' Badenoch inherited a 'party on its knees', the basics of which needed overhauling. 'We'd love to be doing more fun viral social media stuff, but Kemi is sitting down and getting on with it.'
That same afternoon, just over 100 yards away, outside the Westminster Arms, Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, who has impressed MPs with his energetic harrying of the government and a series of fun viral social media clips, was having a drink with Tom Skinner, a former star of The Apprentice (catchphrase: 'Bosh!') who wants to be the Tory candidate for London mayor. A video of the two was soon on Jenrick's social feeds. 'He looked like the leader interviewing a candidate,' a witness says.
All this happened after an Ipsos poll put the Tories on 15 per cent, 19 points behind Reform, their worst showing since the firm began polling in the 1970s. MPs are no longer asking whether they could win the next general election but whether the party is facing extinction next year, when voters are expected to deliver another hammer blow in the local, Scottish and Welsh elections.
Shadow cabinet members have seen private polling showing that the Conservatives could be wiped out in the 2029 general election. Badenoch's personal satisfaction rating of 49 with Ipsos makes her the most unpopular leader of the opposition ever after six months. At this stage William Hague was on 30, Ed Miliband on 10 and Keir Starmer himself just above zero.
'The polls are absolutely horrific,' says a shadow minister. 'Kemi's personal polling is in Liz Truss territory. There is now no precedent for it. People say 'Let Kemi be Kemi' but there are increasingly few don't-knows and they are moving against us. We are being frozen out of the national conversation.' Dozens of MPs believe that if she is still in charge next spring there might be
very little left.
In recent council by-elections in King's Lynn and West Norfolk – a seat still held in the Commons by the Tory James Wild – the Conservatives failed to even field a candidate. Reform won both. In Mansfield, they secured just 9.4 per cent of the vote in a council seat once held by Ben Bradley. Reform got 61.6 per cent.
Another former Downing Street strategist says: 'The best plan at this point is probably to try to salvage what we can. Fight to retain 80 to 100 seats and hope to be relevant when the next government is forming.'
Badenoch's team sees progress, after Starmer was forced to U-turn on holding a public inquiry into rape gangs and over the winter fuel allowance, issues she had championed. She plans to launch a new policy board every week until the summer recess, including a tax commission and one on 'social cohesion'. She will use the party conference in October to unveil her plans for whether and how to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. Party fund-raising has outpaced that of Reform and Labour in the past two quarters. Allies cling to the dictum of David Canzini, a No. 10 strategist under Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, who tells colleagues: 'It takes two years before the public starts to forget your record.' They hope that means Badenoch can make headway in the polls by the summer of 2026.
But despite better performances at Prime Minister's Questions, many Tories think Badenoch is unable to channel her undoubted intellect into something that is palatable to the average voter. When Palestine Action vandalised aircraft at Brize Norton, she tweeted: 'The full force of the law must come down on those responsible.' Nigel Farage called for the group to be 'proscribed'. Jenrick demanded a 'ban'. 'That's what they would say in the pub,' an admirer notes. 'She talks in riddles.' A Conservative peer says: 'She'd be an amazing thinktank director.'
A recent, more pithy summary of her vision for Britain, delivered at a dinner with 25 business leaders, needs to be worked on. One of those present says: 'She implied she wants the same, but less crap, which didn't exactly inspire.' Another senior Tory concluded: 'She seems to be auditioning to be a Spectator columnist' – a noble calling, but not her desired destination.
The shadow chancellor Mel Stride is next in the firing line. 'The widespread view is that [Rachel] Reeves is one of the most unpopular politicians in Britain,' says one of those who want a change of leader, 'and he's barely landed a punch against her.' Insiders claim that after a recent flat Commons
performance by Stride, Badenoch voiced her frustration to a staffer. Colleagues recall a time, during the last leadership contest, when Stride was privately of the view that Badenoch was 'unfit' to lead.
These noises off are denied by Tory high command. Badenoch is 'enjoying working with Mel' and they agree on the need to be the party of fiscal responsibility. Two hours after The Spectator put questions to Badenoch's team about their relationship, they revealed that Stride would take on Angela Rayner at PMQs on Wednesday.
The shadow chancellor, it is only fair to say, did achieve cut-through with his critique of Reeves's 'spend now, tax later' spending review. One Badenoch aide has even begun to use the phrase 'Unshell the Mel' as a homage to 'Uncork the Gauke' – George Osborne's instruction when a reassuringly dull figure needed to be dispatched to the TV studios.
Nonetheless, shadow cabinet colleagues say both Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, and Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, are eyeing Stride's perch. 'Neither is right for it,' says a fellow frontbencher. 'Angling for positions in the shadow cabinet right now is like applying for a promotion on the Titanic.'
While Badenoch is expected to reshuffle her top team before the end of the year, she is likely to wait until Starmer has redrawn his cabinet. The bigger question is whether she is removed. Party rules decree that only after 2 November, Badenoch's first anniversary in the job, could MPs force a vote of
no-confidence, if 36 of the 120 current MPs write a letter to the chairman of the 1922 Committee. Those who plan to strike include young MPs who want a future and those in seats where their local councillors were wiped out in May.
Ross Thomson, a former Aberdeen MP who briefly ran Badenoch's leadership campaign in Scotland, defected to Reform on Tuesday, saying Farage 'offers the real change we need'. Reform is now expecting such an influx of Tory defectors after next May's elections that they might impose a deadline. 'We should tell people there won't be a lifeboat if they wait too long,' a Reform official says. Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, whose husband has already joined Reform, is considering the jump.
Jenrick is now getting unlikely support as Badenoch's replacement. On 10 June he dined in a Mayfair restaurant with David Cameron, Osborne and fellow Cameroon Lord Barker. 'Cameron now thinks Jenrick should take over when the time comes,' says a close ally of the former PM. Cameron's views are pertinent because he has twice been in to help Badenoch prepare for PMQs.
Jenrick is also 'in touch' with Boris Johnson, the 'smash glass in case of emergency' option for the leadership, sparking speculation that Jenrick would secure a peerage for the former prime minister. Some of Johnson's old team, however, talk of him replacing Bob Blackman, the chairman of the '22, and returning to parliament.
Johnson's friends say he has not decided whether he wants to return. Privately he refers to the prospect as 'a series of overlapping impossibilia' and has said: 'There is more chance of a baked bean winning Royal Ascot' than him becoming leader again. Scholars of the Johnson lexicon will note that such formulations were deployed as a smokescreen when he was previously plotting his ascent.
Multiple sources say Johnson has thought about his offer to the party and the country. 'There is a five-point plan,' says a former minister. This would include a mea culpa for the 'Boriswave' which saw net migration soar past 900,000 a year. 'He would blame Priti [Patel],' his home secretary, a source says. But many younger MPs see immigration as a deal-breaker for Johnson, and believe that Jenrick, who resigned from Rishi Sunak's government over it, is the more credible replacement leader.
What could he even do? One of those who is helping to bring critics together says: 'If we can get noticed and start to say the right things, we can make some progress in the polls. Once it starts to reverse, we will have the momentum – Farage knows that if he doesn't have a poll lead by year three he won't be able to get defectors. Farage may be untouchable but we need to attack the sketchy people around him.'
However, most of Badenoch's critics believe there will have to be some sort of understanding with Reform, which will be difficult. Witnesses say that when Andrea Jenkyns, the Reform mayor of Lincolnshire, entered the NFU tent at the Lincolnshire show last week she greeted Robbie Moore, the shadow farming minister, with the words: 'Hello, arsehole.'
If you thought the Tory civil wars were brutal, they might just have been the starter.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Times
21 minutes ago
- Times
Reform would be largest party if general election held today
Reform UK would become Britain's largest political party if an election were held today, putting Nigel Farage in pole position to become Britain's next prime minister, a major survey suggests. YouGov's first MRP poll since Labour's landslide election victory last year reveals the extent of Sir Keir Starmer's fall from grace and suggests the party would lose 233 of the 412 seats it won. Reform, meanwhile, is on track to have 271 new MPs, up from the five that it has now, which would make it the largest party in a hung parliament. The Tories would lose another 75 seats, leaving Kemi Badenoch's party with just 46 MPs, behind Labour, Reform and the Liberal Democrats. However, no party would find it straightforward to form a government. If Reform attempted to build a coalition with the Conservatives they would still be nine seats short of a majority.
Spectator
6 hours ago
- Spectator
Let Kneecap play
During the Troubles, some 2,500 people were victims of kneecappings – punishment shootings, dished out by paramilitaries, for perceived crimes ranging from fraternising with British soldiers to drug dealing and rape. The term is something of a misnomer. The torture entails a low-velocity gunshot to the knee from a handgun. That isn't guaranteed to destroy one's kneecaps but could cause tissue or nerve damage and joint fractures. At least 13 victims had to have their limbs amputated; one in five was once estimated to limp for the rest of their lives. Until recently, a mention of kneecapping was a reminder of the terror that plagued Northern Ireland within living memory. Yet this week, thousands will descend upon Glastonbury, at £373.50 a ticket, for a chance to see a band named after the practice – a group who have won global fame, chart success, government funding and police attention by draping themselves in the violence of Ulster's recent history. For the unfamiliar, Kneecap are a Belfast hip-hop trio. Rapping in English and Irish, their output mixes odes to drug use with Irish republicanism. One of the trio – a 35-year-old ex-teacher – writes 'Brits Out' on his behind and performs in a tricolour balaclava. The band has commissioned a mural depicting a police Land Rover burning from a petrol bomb, above the slogan 'RUC not welcome' in Gaelic. Of late, the self-described 'anti-Zionists' have been especially vocal about the Middle East, performing in California with 'Fuck Israel/Free Palestine' projected behind them. But the band's outspokenness has caught up with them. Last week, one member appeared in court for allegedly displaying a flag supporting Hezbollah – a proscribed terrorist organisation – and chanting 'up Hamas, up Hezbollah' during a recent performance. A resurfaced video from 2023 featured one of the trio exclaiming that 'The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP!' – seven years on from the murder of Jo Cox and two from that of Sir David Amess. Kneecap rushed out a statement 'clarifying' their positions. 'Let us be unequivocal,' the trio announced. 'We do not, and have never, supported Hamas or Hezbollah.' They would never 'seek to incite violence against any MP or individual'. Footage was being 'exploited and weaponised' by their opponents. Up to a point, Lord Copper. If the trio don't want to be accused of supporting terrorism or wanting politicians dead, they should be rather more careful about their language. None of this has stalled Kneecap's momentum. Their Glastonbury gig follows a Bafta-winning biopic last year. Yet beyond the nodding dogs of the music press, there will be many who find their work disgraceful, denials unconvincing and popularity disturbing. As business secretary, Kemi Badenoch blocked a £14,250 grant to the band, later overturned by the courts. Taxpayers' money, she argued, should not be given 'to people who oppose the United Kingdom itself'. She has condemned our national broadcaster for planning to show the group. 'As a publicly funded platform,' she warned, 'the BBC should not be rewarding extremism.' Kneecap came of age in a post-Troubles Northern Ireland. Whether they like it or not, the trio were raised in relative peace in the comfort and protection of the British state. They peddle the aesthetics of terror for the entertainment of the ignorant and nihilistic. Had they lived a little earlier, there is every chance the trio would have been kneecapped themselves, for crimes against good taste. Yet as objectionable as Kneecap are, trying to shut them up is wrong. Doing so provides them with what they want – the oxygen of publicity and the aura of danger. Just as the BBC's desperate efforts to keep the Sex Pistols off the radio during the Silver Jubilee only drove more people to buy their records, every attempt to block Kneecap has so far won them greater fame. If the establishment is so against them, punters might think, they must be doing something right. Letting Kneecap play is a sign of confidence. Their calls to 'Get Your Brits Out' are no more likely to unite Ireland than Johnny Rotten's warbling about a fascist regime was to topple the monarchy. For ageing middle-class Corbynistas with too much time and money on their hands, trekking through crowded Somerset fields to see the band play is a form of radical chic – as essential a fashion statement as draping a keffiyeh around their necks. Never mind that the Royal Ulster Constabulary was disbanded two decades ago. Too often, self-declared free speech defenders only stand up for those they perceive as being on their side. Even John Milton, in Areopagitica, was unwilling to concede freedom of expression to religious enemies. Some who seek to make a martyr out of Lucy Connolly – the mother imprisoned for telling her X followers to 'set fire' to hotels housing asylum seekers after the Southport attacks – are silent about the state's prosecution of Kneecap. Both have been accused of inciting violence; neither deserve to be behind bars. Let Kneecap play. Every Glastonbury goer with a little good taste can stick to Rod Stewart and the Kaiser Chiefs. In their own time, the band may yet be reconciled to the United Kingdom; stranger things have happened. Johnny Rotten, for instance, has declared himself a monarchist, backed Brexit and Donald Trump, and called for Jacob Rees-Mogg to be prime minister. Before they know it, Kneecap will be performing at a Tory conference.
Spectator
6 hours ago
- Spectator
‘It's Liz Truss territory': how bad are things for Kemi Badenoch?
Around 5 p.m. on Monday one of Kemi Badenoch's aides was having a drink with a friend in the Two Chairmen pub in Westminster. Over a pint of IPA he explained how the Conservative leader was planning to thrust herself more forcefully into the public conversation. 'We know the pace needs to quicken,' he admitted. 'Reform are sucking up the political oxygen.' Badenoch inherited a 'party on its knees', the basics of which needed overhauling. 'We'd love to be doing more fun viral social media stuff, but Kemi is sitting down and getting on with it.' That same afternoon, just over 100 yards away, outside the Westminster Arms, Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, who has impressed MPs with his energetic harrying of the government and a series of fun viral social media clips, was having a drink with Tom Skinner, a former star of The Apprentice (catchphrase: 'Bosh!') who wants to be the Tory candidate for London mayor. A video of the two was soon on Jenrick's social feeds. 'He looked like the leader interviewing a candidate,' a witness says. All this happened after an Ipsos poll put the Tories on 15 per cent, 19 points behind Reform, their worst showing since the firm began polling in the 1970s. MPs are no longer asking whether they could win the next general election but whether the party is facing extinction next year, when voters are expected to deliver another hammer blow in the local, Scottish and Welsh elections. Shadow cabinet members have seen private polling showing that the Conservatives could be wiped out in the 2029 general election. Badenoch's personal satisfaction rating of 49 with Ipsos makes her the most unpopular leader of the opposition ever after six months. At this stage William Hague was on 30, Ed Miliband on 10 and Keir Starmer himself just above zero. 'The polls are absolutely horrific,' says a shadow minister. 'Kemi's personal polling is in Liz Truss territory. There is now no precedent for it. People say 'Let Kemi be Kemi' but there are increasingly few don't-knows and they are moving against us. We are being frozen out of the national conversation.' Dozens of MPs believe that if she is still in charge next spring there might be very little left. In recent council by-elections in King's Lynn and West Norfolk – a seat still held in the Commons by the Tory James Wild – the Conservatives failed to even field a candidate. Reform won both. In Mansfield, they secured just 9.4 per cent of the vote in a council seat once held by Ben Bradley. Reform got 61.6 per cent. Another former Downing Street strategist says: 'The best plan at this point is probably to try to salvage what we can. Fight to retain 80 to 100 seats and hope to be relevant when the next government is forming.' Badenoch's team sees progress, after Starmer was forced to U-turn on holding a public inquiry into rape gangs and over the winter fuel allowance, issues she had championed. She plans to launch a new policy board every week until the summer recess, including a tax commission and one on 'social cohesion'. She will use the party conference in October to unveil her plans for whether and how to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. Party fund-raising has outpaced that of Reform and Labour in the past two quarters. Allies cling to the dictum of David Canzini, a No. 10 strategist under Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, who tells colleagues: 'It takes two years before the public starts to forget your record.' They hope that means Badenoch can make headway in the polls by the summer of 2026. But despite better performances at Prime Minister's Questions, many Tories think Badenoch is unable to channel her undoubted intellect into something that is palatable to the average voter. When Palestine Action vandalised aircraft at Brize Norton, she tweeted: 'The full force of the law must come down on those responsible.' Nigel Farage called for the group to be 'proscribed'. Jenrick demanded a 'ban'. 'That's what they would say in the pub,' an admirer notes. 'She talks in riddles.' A Conservative peer says: 'She'd be an amazing thinktank director.' A recent, more pithy summary of her vision for Britain, delivered at a dinner with 25 business leaders, needs to be worked on. One of those present says: 'She implied she wants the same, but less crap, which didn't exactly inspire.' Another senior Tory concluded: 'She seems to be auditioning to be a Spectator columnist' – a noble calling, but not her desired destination. The shadow chancellor Mel Stride is next in the firing line. 'The widespread view is that [Rachel] Reeves is one of the most unpopular politicians in Britain,' says one of those who want a change of leader, 'and he's barely landed a punch against her.' Insiders claim that after a recent flat Commons performance by Stride, Badenoch voiced her frustration to a staffer. Colleagues recall a time, during the last leadership contest, when Stride was privately of the view that Badenoch was 'unfit' to lead. These noises off are denied by Tory high command. Badenoch is 'enjoying working with Mel' and they agree on the need to be the party of fiscal responsibility. Two hours after The Spectator put questions to Badenoch's team about their relationship, they revealed that Stride would take on Angela Rayner at PMQs on Wednesday. The shadow chancellor, it is only fair to say, did achieve cut-through with his critique of Reeves's 'spend now, tax later' spending review. One Badenoch aide has even begun to use the phrase 'Unshell the Mel' as a homage to 'Uncork the Gauke' – George Osborne's instruction when a reassuringly dull figure needed to be dispatched to the TV studios. Nonetheless, shadow cabinet colleagues say both Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, and Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, are eyeing Stride's perch. 'Neither is right for it,' says a fellow frontbencher. 'Angling for positions in the shadow cabinet right now is like applying for a promotion on the Titanic.' While Badenoch is expected to reshuffle her top team before the end of the year, she is likely to wait until Starmer has redrawn his cabinet. The bigger question is whether she is removed. Party rules decree that only after 2 November, Badenoch's first anniversary in the job, could MPs force a vote of no-confidence, if 36 of the 120 current MPs write a letter to the chairman of the 1922 Committee. Those who plan to strike include young MPs who want a future and those in seats where their local councillors were wiped out in May. Ross Thomson, a former Aberdeen MP who briefly ran Badenoch's leadership campaign in Scotland, defected to Reform on Tuesday, saying Farage 'offers the real change we need'. Reform is now expecting such an influx of Tory defectors after next May's elections that they might impose a deadline. 'We should tell people there won't be a lifeboat if they wait too long,' a Reform official says. Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, whose husband has already joined Reform, is considering the jump. Jenrick is now getting unlikely support as Badenoch's replacement. On 10 June he dined in a Mayfair restaurant with David Cameron, Osborne and fellow Cameroon Lord Barker. 'Cameron now thinks Jenrick should take over when the time comes,' says a close ally of the former PM. Cameron's views are pertinent because he has twice been in to help Badenoch prepare for PMQs. Jenrick is also 'in touch' with Boris Johnson, the 'smash glass in case of emergency' option for the leadership, sparking speculation that Jenrick would secure a peerage for the former prime minister. Some of Johnson's old team, however, talk of him replacing Bob Blackman, the chairman of the '22, and returning to parliament. Johnson's friends say he has not decided whether he wants to return. Privately he refers to the prospect as 'a series of overlapping impossibilia' and has said: 'There is more chance of a baked bean winning Royal Ascot' than him becoming leader again. Scholars of the Johnson lexicon will note that such formulations were deployed as a smokescreen when he was previously plotting his ascent. Multiple sources say Johnson has thought about his offer to the party and the country. 'There is a five-point plan,' says a former minister. This would include a mea culpa for the 'Boriswave' which saw net migration soar past 900,000 a year. 'He would blame Priti [Patel],' his home secretary, a source says. But many younger MPs see immigration as a deal-breaker for Johnson, and believe that Jenrick, who resigned from Rishi Sunak's government over it, is the more credible replacement leader. What could he even do? One of those who is helping to bring critics together says: 'If we can get noticed and start to say the right things, we can make some progress in the polls. Once it starts to reverse, we will have the momentum – Farage knows that if he doesn't have a poll lead by year three he won't be able to get defectors. Farage may be untouchable but we need to attack the sketchy people around him.' However, most of Badenoch's critics believe there will have to be some sort of understanding with Reform, which will be difficult. Witnesses say that when Andrea Jenkyns, the Reform mayor of Lincolnshire, entered the NFU tent at the Lincolnshire show last week she greeted Robbie Moore, the shadow farming minister, with the words: 'Hello, arsehole.' If you thought the Tory civil wars were brutal, they might just have been the starter.
