'Don't laugh but Kemi Badenoch could well be next Prime Minister'

The Herald Scotland

09-05-2025

Mr Farage's Reform UK party has topped nine of the last 13 opinion polls, with the other four resulting in a tie with Labour.
And in a 'real' poll of voters last Thursday, the party emerged with by far the highest vote share which, extrapolated into Westminster, would have resulted in Reform winning almost as many seats in the House of Commons as Labour and the Tories combined.
We have seen a similar trend in other countries around the world. A population, despondent about the impact the cost of living is having on their lives and disillusioned with their mainstream political offering, looks for an alternative. The alternative emerges, usually in the form of a strong and outspoken figure, speaking their language and offering some hope for them.
That hope is generally based on the abolition of three things: net zero (it makes you cold and poor), immigration (they're taking your jobs), and wokery (what a lot of nonsense).
The formula has had success already, most obviously in the United States with the re-election of Donald Trump, and perhaps second most famously in Italy with the election of Giorgia Meloni, who has taken her Fratelli d'Italia party from two per cent of the vote to the Palazzo Chigi in less than a decade.
Mr Farage would probably liken his rise more to that of the namesake Reform Party of Canada which, in the space of 16 years between 1987 and 2003, eroded the vote of the Progressive Conservatives, killed them, ate them, and created a new Conservative party which went on to win three elections.
So, we have seen it happen elsewhere, and we could see it happen here.
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First Past the Post is the blunt instrument of electoral systems. A party can go from an insignificant number of seats (Mr Farage won only five last year despite winning nearly 15 per cent of the vote) to hundreds (Sir Keir Starmer's Labour won over 400 on only one-third of the vote share) once a tipping-point of vote share is achieved.
Furthermore, should Reform UK, Labour, and the Tories all win between 150 and 200 seats in 2029, but with Mr Farage in first place, the pressure on the Conservatives to get behind a party whose values many Tories share, and help them into government, will be overwhelming.
So, that is a version of the future.
It is credible.
It is possible.
But it is not inevitable.
Indeed, there are two counterfactuals which have at least reasonable credibility. The first, and perhaps most obvious, is the re-emergence of support for the Labour party.
Sir Keir has made a dismal start to his time in office, with an unprecedented drop in support to somewhere in the mid-20 per cent range, where it has been stuck for around six months.
Nonetheless, Sir Keir has time on his side. Labour's vote share, although low, seems stable, and may have hit its floor.
Nigel Farage (Image: PA)
As time passes and memories of some of the more unpopular decisions fade, Sir Keir's undoubted competence and authority may start to raise the red boat.
Indeed, the looming reality of Mr Farage may convince some more voters from the centre of the Conservative party, and the Liberal Democrats, to back Sir Keir to stop him.
Mr Farage's party, of course, may yet implode. We have been told of the end of two-party politics before, often by Mr Farage himself, only for his UKIP party, or his Brexit party, to fall out with itself and, for one reason or another, not fulfil its potential.
There are already internal problems in the Reform UK party and, with hundreds of new local councillors, Mr Farage will be concerned about how many skeletons are hidden in closets, waiting to get out and damage his prospects.
Circumstances sometimes call for the clever, boring centrist.
Just ask Pierre Poilievre, who was due to stroll into 24 Sussex Drive, the residence of the Prime Minister of Canada, before the population rushed towards the safe and dependable arms of Mark Carney in the face of President Trump's intimidation.
So, Labour again?
Maybe.
But there is a second counterfactual, less obvious at the moment, but nonetheless something which will no doubt sit at the back of the mind of Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader.
Support for Ms Badenoch's Tories has certainly not risen since she took the leadership in the wake of her party being gutted at the election, but it has not fallen, either.
It is stable enough, and in most polls sits only a few percentage points behind Labour and Reform UK.
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This is as much about mathematics as it is about politics, and looking dispassionately at the numbers, the path to Downing Street for Ms Badenoch has far fewer twists, turns, and potholes than at first may seem the case.
In reality, only two things need to happen, both of which are perfectly possible.
The first is that the Conservatives have to win more seats than Reform UK. Not inevitable, but absolutely possible.
The second is that, between them, the Conservatives and Reform UK need a Parliamentary majority of 326 seats.
Again not inevitable, and the Tories would need to add some 50 seats to their current tally, but absolutely possible.
The confluence of these two events would most likely end up in Kemi Badenoch becoming Prime Minister.
There is a perfectly reasonable point to be made, in that event, that she would be a puppet to Mr Farage the puppet-master; in office but not in power. That may be true, but it is a different argument for a different day. Politics is historically volatile.
Brexit.
The 2019 election.
President Trump's re-election.
How many times have we been told something is impossible before it becomes reality? It may be too early to be sure that Mr Farage and Reform UK are here to stay until 2019. It may be too early to write off Sir Keir. By the same logic, then, it is far too early to write off Kemi Badenoch.
Andy Maciver is Founding Director of Message Matters, and co-host of the Holyrood Sources podcast.