William Atkinson

Much like Alan Partridge, Kemi Badenoch hopes to have bounced back. After an unsure start to her first year as Tory leader – hopeless interviews and PMQs showings, and a local election shellacking – she now seems to be on a roll. Her two recent set piece speeches at conference and responding to the Budget were successes, her parliamentary performances have been more assured, and she can now get through an interview without declaring war on her ethnic enemies. The Conservatives are no longer spiralling towards fourth; her personal ratings have ticked up to the dizzying heights of -14. For the first time since Badenoch became leader, I feel a faint twig of optimism For those of us of a Kemi-sceptic disposition, this is quite distressing.

Like every Tory Boy, I had a Margaret Thatcher poster. I put it up when I was 15 and had just joined the party. Above my bed, resplendent in blue, the Iron Lady glowered down at my teddies. Naturally, it came down when I first brought home a girlfriend. For any young Tories lacking in Thatcher tat, this week’s Conservative party conference will provide plenty of opportunities for purchasing some. It (almost) coincides with the 100th anniversary of Thatcher’s birth on 13 October. The occasion has been heralded by a series of think-tank initiatives, dinners and conferences and the release of a one-volume edition of Charles Moore’s biography. The Iron Lady’s spectre looms as large as ever over this conference. Many of today’s Conservatives remain in hock to her.

Would a Reform government lift the ban on fracking? ‘Abso-bloody-lutely,’ is Nigel Farage's answer. Fracking and nuclear will form the core of Reform’s push for British energy self-sufficiency – a drive that will see the Net Zero target junked if the party wins power. The Reform leader made his remarks at ‘Net Zero: The New Brexit?’, a panel ebent in Westminster, put on by Heartland UK & Europe, a new cross-Atlantic offshoot of a prominent US think-tank. But while his punchiest view at the event was on the Iran-Israel war – ‘Let’s get rid of this bloody awful lot’ was his take on the Islamic Republic – the Reform leader clearly sees how the subject of energy can help his party to woo voters.

On Wednesday, The Spectator dispatched me to Dominic Cummings’s Pharos lecture in Oxford. Packed into the Sheldonian theatre was an interesting crowd. I spotted several X anons, my A-Level politics teacher and Brass Eye creator Chris Morris. For many in the audience, this was a rare opportunity to see their hero; for one or two hecklers, it was a unique chance to harrumph at the villain of Brexit, lockdown, and Barnard Castle. You can read a transcript of his lecture here. I’m a Cummings fan. Having first discovered him via our political editor’s books, I began reading his blog as a teen. I worked through the reading lists, defended his eye test in my student magazine, and heralded him as the future of the right in an article only last year.

The Conservative Party is not an imaginative organisation. The clue is in the name. In response to an electoral disaster – like last week’s local election Götterdämmerung – its established method is to work through three familiar stages: pretend, Comical Ali-style, that everything is fine; begin plotting to oust the leader; and then smash the glass marked ‘bring back Boris Johnson’. Having ticked off one and two, yesterday saw the unhappy launch of stage three. Politico have suggested a growing number of Tories, including MPs, are pining for the party's ex-leader-but-two. No MP has gone public with a call to 'Bring Back Boris' quite yet.

It’s always sad to discover that one of your favourite quotations was made up. After communism’s fall, Robert Conquest’s American publisher was said to have asked him for a new title for a republished edition of The Great Terror, his seminal book documenting Stalin’s mass murder of his own citizens. His suggestion? I told you so, you fucking fools. Alas, I recently learnt that the faultlessly polite Conquest never said it, the anecdote being an invention of his swearier chum Kingsley Amis. Nonetheless, ‘I told you so, you fucking fools’ would be a rather cask strength way of describing how those of us who have long been gloomy about Tory prospects under Kemi Badenoch feel after Thursday’s local election drubbing.

Kemi Badenoch faces her first big electoral test in this week’s local elections. The Conservative party has much to lose. Of the 1,642 council seats up for grabs, 940, accounting for boundary changes, were won by the Tories back in 2021. For Badenoch, the only path on Thursday is down. Four years ago, Boris Johnson was at the peak of his ‘vaccine bounce’. Those were halcyon days, pre-Partygate, Trussonomics, and Toryism's worst defeat since James II’s exile. In May 2021, the Conservatives poll ratings were at 45 per cent. Today, they barely top 20 per cent, falling back from last summer's defeat. Amongst party members, Badenoch's leadership is increasingly unpopular.