Kemi Badenoch concludes Tory conference amid newfound unity
Kemi Badenoch left Birmingham with something that has eluded Tory leaders for years: a party conference where nobody appeared to be plotting her downfall, reports BritPanorama.
“We’ve never had so little fighting… probably ever,” one Tory MP marvels. For a party where the bars traditionally fill up with plots before they fill up with delegates, the outbreak of peace took some getting used to.
Badenoch herself celebrated rather less extravagantly. After her speech, her team squeezed into a dressing room high in the gods of Symphony Hall for Coke Zero, sparkling water, and a group photo. She thanked them, climbed into a car, and left Birmingham.
There was at least one reason to crack open something stronger. The Conservatives’ gloriously bonkers Bayeux-style tapestry had proved such a hit that somebody at business day offered Badenoch £100,000 to buy it. Her response: “That’s the opening bid.”
The swagger was new, although one Tory party figure was quick to remind colleagues that a few days without civil war had not suddenly fixed the polls. Still, those closest to Badenoch believe something important shifted. They tell me the decision to begin the conference with “The Right Way,” her attempt to spell out exactly what Conservatives believe, was designed to cure a problem accumulated over 14 years in power.
“We’d done Brexit. Not everyone in the party liked that. We locked people up during the pandemic. Not everyone liked that. We raised various taxes. We lost our way on immigration,” said one insider. “The reason the conference felt positive and united is because Kemi has given the party a purpose again.”
Asked to describe Badenoch’s style, one Shadow Cabinet minister did not hesitate: “She doesn’t like waffle.” She also hates people working in silos, preferring to pick up the phone, argue it out, and move on—even while on holiday. As Badenoch joked from the stage, her Shadow Cabinet “actually likes each other.”
But behind all the newfound Tory togetherness lies a much tougher argument: who exactly are they trying to win back? One Shadow Cabinet Minister boiled the answer down with striking bluntness: “disgusted Tories,” “Reform voters in the South,” and “Lib Dem voters who care about the economy.” There was a rather obvious omission.
Another party figure was even more brutal about parts of Boris Johnson’s once-famous electoral coalition: “The Red Wall is gone. It’s never coming back.” Bury South was cited as the sort of seat some Conservatives privately regard as lost for good.
Team Kemi says that is far too crude. “It’s obviously quite reductive to say the Red Wall is gone,” they observe, insisting the conference offer was a “full country strategy.” Inheritance tax cuts may appeal more in wealthier seats, they accept, but cutting employers’ National Insurance for under-25s, creating jobs, and building another 50,000 prison places are intended to speak well beyond the leafy South.
Yet scratch beneath the rebuttal, and there is clearly an order of battle. “We need to get back our core vote that we’ve lost to basically Lib Dems, Labour, and Reform – aspirational middle-class voters,” one MP argued. Getting the party regularly back towards 25 per cent, they claimed, would enable them to “take the fight more widely.”
One Tory MP can see the logic but is not entirely convinced. Their question is how Badenoch expects to lure back former Conservatives who fled to Labour and the Lib Dems while simultaneously taking a hard line on Europe and immigration. If those voters were put off by the post-Brexit Tory party, why would doubling down bring them home?
The answer from those close to Kemi is essentially, you have misunderstood why they left. “It wasn’t an outflow of love for Lib Dem MPs,” one source said, arguing that in many seats, the Conservative vote simply collapsed, with Reform taking another bite out of the Right and Ed Davey’s party coming through the middle.
Many former Tory voters were themselves furious about immigration, taxes, and “the general state of the country.” The idea that leafy Lib Dem seats are packed with voters desperate for more Brussels is “nonsense,” they insist.
An MP also argued the party got itself into this mess in the first place by spending too much time “polling, segmenting, and strategising” voter groups until it became “unmoored” from what it actually believed. Even he accepts a traditional Tory message may be heard “first and loudest in our traditional areas,” helping the party eventually “earn the badge as the party of the right” before taking the fight to Labour more widely.
So CCHQ may recoil at the phrase, but there is plainly an element of easier voters first, harder voters later. Paul Bristow, the Tory mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, expressed concern that Westminster risks getting far too excited about its coloured walls. “People want to feel like the Government is on their side and has the right instincts. Kemi started to do that at conference.”
Badenoch’s next budget is anticipated to be a seismic moment, presenting a choice between two visions for the country: a socialist, 1970s-style option or a business-led, lower tax and jobs-led alternative.
Reform, unsurprisingly, has a rather less charitable reading. One former Tory, now a member of Reform, responded, “Kemi is doing neither. Her economic offer is to millionaires, and she dismisses traditional British values as just another form of left-wing identity politics.”
Meanwhile, Labour cannot simply sit back. A Labour minister remarked that the old habit of voting for whichever party one’s parents and grandparents backed has broken for good. For Labour to reclaim those Red Wall seats, it will require more than nostalgia; it will need substantial change regarding financial stability and trust on immigration issues.
A Badenoch-led party left Birmingham with a clearer identity, apparent unity, and a valuable tapestry. However, to secure a significant place in history, she must navigate the challenges that remain and counter the threat posed by figures like Farage.
Clear tasks lie ahead. The Conservatives must realign their messages to reconnect with former supporters while addressing the complexities of modern British politics.
