The Tories launched their local election campaign this morning, with a beaming Kemi Badenoch surrounded by rows of flag-waving party members. The polls remain stubbornly low for the party, but the Conservative leader gave little sign of that getting to her. In a 20-minute speech, she gave an upbeat, on-message performance which centred on her slogan of ‘strong economy, strong country’. It mixed her favoured turf on cultural issues along with a veritable smorgasbord of ‘red meat’ on fiscal policy: a stamp duty cut, a fuel duty cut and slashing business rates too. The figures might be a little iffy – can the Tories really cut £47 billion without touching the triple lock? – but it had the party faithful cheering.
Badenoch’s framing of the forthcoming elections is one based on traditional Tory themes, framing them as the party of meritocracy against its soft-headed, soft-hearted rivals. ‘Some people want more benefits with Labour, some people want nationalisation with Nigel Farage’, she said. ‘Some people want bigger boobs with Zack Polanski. That’s fine, that’s what they want – we’ve got a better offer: we offer those who want jobs and opportunity.’ Flanked by the furrowed broughs of Mel Stride and the blonde locks of Mims Davies, she talked repeatedly of ‘hard working people’ and ‘taking back our streets’: an update for 2026 on the old Cameron-era themes of ‘workers versus shirkers’. Notably, despite a reference to North Sea oil, there was no reference to Scotland or Wales: an acknowledgement, perhaps, of the shellacking that awaits there. Instead, it was London – so often tough terrain for the Tories – that was both the host venue today and the first place which Badenoch listed when she reeled off a list of key areas across the country.
When it came to questions, Badenoch again showed how much she has grown in the past 15 months as leader. She neatly pivoted each time to focus on her key lines, hammering Sadiq Khan on Brexit, the Lords on the abortion vote and Keir Starmer on Iran. Half the questions, inevitably, focused on the current Tory plight against Reform. Badenoch duly found a series of creative ways to offer upbeat answers. ‘I don’t care what Nigel Farage says,’ she told GB News. ‘I am here to deliver a message, and that is the Conservative party is coming back.’ ‘Last time I checked, not a single vote has been cast,’ she informed the BBC. ‘We’re not coming back just for our sakes – we’re coming back for the country’s sake.’ ‘Obviously a good result would be if we won 100 per cent of all of the seats all over,’ she retorted to the Telegraph. ‘We’re going to keep getting better, but we need the trust of the public to show that this time we are going to get it right.’
Her most interesting remarks were perhaps at the end, when the Guardian asked Badenoch for her view on Nick Timothy’s criticism of Muslim prayer in Trafalgar Square. She brushed it off, praising Timothy, speaking of her support for freedom of religion but that ‘I’m very uncomfortable with seeing women pushed to the back in the middle of Trafalgar Square in an event which is exclusionary.’ She added ‘We need to make sure that the religious expression is in conformity with our values, our norms, our beliefs. And sometimes that does mean saying, actually, no, that’s probably too much.’ Coming a week after her call at the Conservative spring conference in Harrogate for ‘cultural enforcement’, talk of conformity raises questions around effective public policy to enforce this. Expect more on this point when we get more details of the ‘Cultural and Integration Commission’, which Badenoch unveiled a fortnight ago.
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