Conservative party

Malcolm Offord has today quit Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives to join Reform UK. The peer was unveiled at a press conference today in Falkirk, as Nigel Farage’s party ramp up their campaigning ahead of the Holyrood elections next year. Offord, a former minister, becomes the second sitting frontbencher to quit the Conservatives in recent months, following Danny Kruger’s departure in September. It means that Reform UK now boast their first peer in the House of Lords. Offord will stand down from the Upper House if he is elected to the Scottish Parliament in May. It is worth remembering that Offord enthusiastically backed Kemi Badenoch for leader Offord cited his Unionism as the main motive for his defection.

On the day of the local elections in May, when the Tories suffered a historic setback, Kemi Badenoch went to the gym and got her hair done. A screenshot of the Tory leader’s diary, leaked by a disgruntled Conservative, shows she planned a Harley Street dental appointment at 9 a.m., followed by 90 minutes at a boutique pilates gym at 11 a.m., followed by an hour-long visit to the hairdresser at 1 p.m. Plenty of politicians take it easy on election day, but the leak is significant because it shows someone still wants to wound her. For her internal enemies, she remains on probation. ‘Thousands of loyal Conservative party activists went out that morning in a desperate attempt to door-knock voters,’ an internal critic charged.

Brits who make a pivot to America tend to fall into two categories. There are those who seek a bigger stage – like Alfred Hitchcock or Christopher Hitchens. Then there are those who were in some sense “run out of town” back in Britain and now seek solace and refuge in the New World. Under this heading we can put the Pilgrim Fathers, Thomas Paine, Mark Thatcher (wayward son of Margaret Thatcher), and now, Kemi Badenoch – beleaguered leader of Britain’s Conservative Party. Badenoch has penned an odd op-ed for the New York Post celebrating the policies of the second Trump administration.

Who is responsible for Labour’s recent woes? For some Conservatives, the answer is obvious – Sheridan Westlake. He is that rarest of beasts: an effective Tory operator who has served every leader since John Major. Flaxen-haired with an impish grin, he is spoken of by colleagues as part myth, part political mastermind. Yet ask him what he does, and the stock answer is modest: ‘I simply do the photocopying.’ ‘He just likes getting up in the morning and kicking socialists. He’s in it for the love of the game’ The resignation of Angela Rayner last month is widely attributed within Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) to an effective campaign by the party’s attack team.

British politics often resembles a golden-age murder mystery, with multiple parties sitting anxiously on the sofas/green benches waiting for the detective/electorate to crack the case. The Reform, Labour and Tory conferences provided a plethora of clues. But just as Sherlock Holmes solved ‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze’ by diving into the significance of the dog that didn’t bark, just as much can be learned from what didn’t happen over the past few weeks. First, there was no serious leadership challenge from the pretenders in Labour or the Conservatives. Andy Burnham turned up in Liverpool with a knife between his teeth, only to discover he neither had a seat nor the 80 parliamentary supporters needed to challenge Keir Starmer.

‘The Conservative party is over.’ Until recently, such talk could be dismissed in Westminster as typical Nigel Farage hyperbole. But the decision of Danny Kruger to defect to Reform UK this week has left some Tories wondering if their party’s condition is fatal. Kruger – MP for East Wiltshire since 2019 – wrote speeches for David Cameron, corralled troops for Boris Johnson and ran Robert Jenrick’s leadership campaign last year. Until this week, he was seen as one of the Tory party’s most prominent thinkers. He is the biggest defection to Reform yet. When we meet in his new party’s headquarters, Kruger is reflecting on the brutal business of politics. Outside, Union Jacks flutter at half-mast for the funeral of the Duchess of Kent.