Conservatives

There was a moment backstage, before I interviewed Kemi Badenoch for a Spectator event this week, when I felt like John Sergeant with Margaret Thatcher bearing down on him as he pronounced her leadership in difficulty. I suggested to Badenoch that she was a rare example of a politician I had changed my mind about. ‘You mean you were very negative before?’ she said, fixing me with the full alpha female glare. I muttered something placatory, but the truth is that a year ago I thought she was rubbish – and that was the mainstream view in her own party. She was arrogant, flat-footed, absenting herself from a stage that was being dominated by Nigel Farage, resistant to advice, convinced she was great at PMQs when even Keir Starmer was wiping the floor with her.

For all of the squabbling between Reform and Restore, the Right’s best chance at a by-election win on 18 June may not be in Makerfield, but 300-odd miles further north – in Aberdeen. The beneficiary wouldn’t be Nigel Farage or Rupert Lowe, but Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives. The Tory candidate is now ‘quietly confident’ It’s unsurprising that this contest has been largely overlooked. My Westminster colleagues treat the suburbs of Manchester as being almost unfathomably distant, so the North Sea coast seems like an alien planet. But Aberdeen is also a city used to being ignored. According to the Centre for Cities, between 2010 and 2020, household incomes in the city fell by almost 7 per cent; between 2010 and 2023, it was one of only two cities in the UK to lose jobs.

Plenty of narratives can be pulled out of last Thursday’s elections. Labour’s shattered hold over its Northern and Welsh heartlands; the imperviousness of Scottish voters to the inadequacies of SNP rule; the onward march of Reform; the continuing irrelevance of the Lib Dems; the foaming of the River Tiber heralded by sectarian success. But one that cannot – if you still want to be able to look yourself in the eye in the morning mirror – is that they were good for the Conservatives. Trying to turn these results into a victory only leaves Badenoch looking like Comical Kemi Kemi Badenoch was out in front of the cameras early, surrounded by beaming activists, heralding her party’s success in taking back Westminster from Labour.

What does a dying government sound like? At 12.08 p.m. on 4 February we got an answer. Keir Starmer admitted to the House of Commons that he knew about Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein when he made him ambassador to the US in 2024. There was a sharp intake of breath from the shocked Labour benches. It was the kind of moment that defines a premiership. And it was also testament to an effective Leader of the Opposition. In the drama of Mandelson’s disgrace, the Conservative party played its part well. After besting Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions, Kemi Badenoch turned to coaching the Labour backbenches. She had put down a humble address, urging all correspondence be released between ministers and Mandelson. Would they back her or not?

I mentioned here recently that to my mind Boris Johnson bears a fairish similarity to Dr Faustus, as Christopher Marlowe portrayed him: selling his soul only to then waste his time in futile and silly gestures. The Conservative party is one of the only political parties whose leader seems to rather dislike its own voters Perhaps I can now add Rishi Sunak as another possible stand-in for that role. As Sunak announced a general election in the drenching rain last week, I was forced to ask again: ‘What was the point of all this? What was the point of rising up the ladder, of knifing his predecessor, of working, campaigning and scheming, only to leave in such a manner? Why seek the highest political office only to have no idea what to do with it once there?

Who is the most divisive figure in politics? Last year the Daily Mirror claimed Lee Anderson was ‘the worst man in Britain’. This week the Conservative MP is managing to cause a headache both for Labour and his own party. Anderson is a grassroots favourite who even before he was made deputy chairman of the party was near top of the list when it came to the MPs local associations wanted to speak at their events. When No. 10 gave him the role back in February, the idea was that he would help Rishi Sunak in his appeal to the 2019 coalition – with Anderson a straight-talking red wall MP. This week there was evidence, too, of how his comments can make life uncomfortable for Labour.

The political world splits in two whenever fresh evidence emerges that Boris Johnson does not think that life’s rules and norms apply to him. One faction, the majority, humourlessly harrumphs about standards and brands him unfit for high office. Another tries to excuse the latest infraction. It’s a grey area. It’s not a serious matter. There’s a vendetta against him. Today we saw the latest case of Johnson finding it churlish to expect him to stick to the ‘network of obligation that binds everyone’ (a phrase that should be copyright of his Eton classics teacher, Martin Hammond).

Conservative governments have a habit of self-destructing: they die not in battle with political enemies but as a result of vicious infighting. It’s been less than three years since Boris Johnson’s triumphant 80-seat election victory, which seemed at the time to come close to condemning Labour to oblivion. Yet this week in Birmingham it was the Conservatives who have looked doomed, posing a far greater threat to each other than to Keir Starmer. In her conference speech, Liz Truss laid out a confident and coherent agenda. She is correct about the need to harness the power of free enterprise to kickstart growth, but she failed to prepare the ground for her agenda. Since entering No.