Kemi badenoch

Kemi Badenoch, headlines my newspaper, ‘prepares Tories for early general election’ with her big reshuffle this week. I do not myself think an early election is the probability. It would be hugely risky. Labour would certainly lose scores of seats to Reform; and the requirement for Andy Burnham to produce an actual manifesto rather than – as at present – a distracting sprinkle of happy thoughts would make his government an easy target for a dangerous Conservative ‘They’re coming for your money’ campaign. Reform are still strong. Better, perhaps, to wait until (as I expect) Nigel Farage loses his mojo, the Greens fail to recover theirs, and Britain begins a slow return to something like the two-party system that first-past-the-post tends to encourage.

Since succeeding Rishi Sunak in November 2024, Kemi Badenoch has had two jobs to perform. Firstly, her constitutional obligation as leader of the opposition, which she has fulfilled well. In parliament, depleted Tory ranks have been marshalled effectively, harrying successive Labour notables from office by tabling questions and demanding answers from, among others, Peter Mandelson and Morgan McSweeney. Her despatch box style has impressed – though, after the departure of Keir Starmer, aides concede that a tonal shift might be necessary for the ‘very different beast’ that is Andy Burnham. Now, with her position secure, it is the second task to which she must turn: her role as leader of the Conservative party. Most Tory leaders have a strained relationship with their party.

Home Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, summoned cabinet ministers for a day at No. 10 North – Heron House in central Manchester, shared with intelligence agencies – which he reached by private jet to Glasgow, where he had an appointment, and another private jet south to Manchester. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine became the first international visitor to Mr Burnham, who told him: ‘You can count on the UK for as long as it takes.’ He decided to speed up the independent review of adult social care being undertaken by Baroness Casey of Blackstock. He said that he wanted schools to offer technical courses to children aged 14 and over.

In the 2024 American and British national elections, it was no mystery why the incumbents lost. Both the Democratic and Conservative parties had abandoned their core principles. Democrats veered so far left that they fell off the edge of the world. Tories squandered 14 years in power competing with the sopping opposition over who could be more wet, a strategy perfectly designed to alienate the entire electorate. Left-wing voters will not – surprise – vote ‘Conservative’. Conservative voters want – surprise – conservative representatives and instead got sheep in sheep’s clothing. Although I’m seldom keen on purity tests, Kemi Badenoch now heads a party that resembles Britain’s sewage-mucked rivers, and it could use some purifying.

Andy Burnham has not yet entered No. 10, but the Conservatives and Reform are already preparing for the possibility of an early general election. Resources are being redeployed, attack lines sharpened and campaign plans drawn up for the aftermath of Labour’s coronation. Nigel Farage wants a snap showdown. Kemi Badenoch insists defence must be properly funded before the country is returned to the polls. The rapid elevation of the MP for Makerfield poses tricky questions for his opponents. Burnham has built a following without a clearly defined ideology or coherent policy programme, leaving strategists in Reform and the Conservative party – like much of Britain – unsure which version of him will walk into No. 10. Yet despite that uncertainty, preparations are being made fast.

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.

In March, just before Artemis II rounded the far side of the Moon, the Transport Secretary had her own lunar encounter. Heidi Alexander claims that a ‘moon crater’-sized pothole forced her Mini off the road in Oxfordshire. She is far from alone. Pothole casualties in Britain rose from 270 in 2020 to 393 in 2024, including six dead. An RAC Europe survey found that 62 per cent of British drivers thought European roads are better maintained. Britain’s pothole problem is a story of government dysfunction. Local authorities seem unable to perform their basic duties; meanwhile, council tax continues to rise, bin collection becomes more infrequent and public spaces continue to deteriorate.

Fresh from chastising Labour for not involving Britain more deeply in another American misadventure in the Middle East, Kemi Badenoch is reportedly planning a ‘root and branch’ shadow cabinet reshuffle. Those most at risk are said to be her top team of Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride, Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel and Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp. For Lam, there are plenty of reasons to defect to Nigel Farage’s party The intention, the Daily Mail suggests, is to promote younger MPs ‘to energise the battered Tory brand’. Stride is said to ‘lack energy’, Patel ‘reminds voters of record levels of migration’, and Philp is believed to ‘no longer [be] fully focused on the job at hand’. None of these is a surprise.

Freed from the burden of choosing a prospective government, by-elections are an opportunity for voters to tell the political class how they really feel. It is therefore no great surprise that the people of Gorton and Denton, until now a solid Labour heartland, have called on the uber-left Greens to give the status quo a kicking, with Reform coming in second. For the Conservatives, the more interesting story is not the Greens’ success in outer Manchester, but what the Green surge at the national level says about the voters who have been drifting into Zack Polanski’s orbit. The Greens have previously benefited from the agreeable vagueness of their brand. Green is a comforting word, smelling of cut grass and virtue.