William Atkinson

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.

As with so many of the aphorisms and witticisms attributed to Winston Churchill, it is impossible to verify whether the greatest Briton actually ever said that ‘Americans can always be trusted to the right thing, once all the other possibilities have been exhausted’. But that expression immediately came to my mind when reading J. D. Vance’s UnHerd interview – and over a remark entailing Churchill’s prime ministerial successor, to boot. Vance’s real message to Europe? Anthony Eden woz rite. The Vice-President said much of interest. The news that the UK and US are close to signing a ‘great agreement’ on trade had the Ftse 100 rallying.

Amanda Spielman, former Ofsted chief inspector, is set to become a Conservative peer. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is elevating Spielman – who served as head of Ofsted between 2017 and 2023 – to the House of Lords for her outstanding record in improving school standards. Spielman's peerage is richly deserved. She helped ensure that Tory education reforms, which saw the share of children in Good or Outstanding schools rise from 66 per cent to 86 per cent between 2010 and 2018, were maintained. Throughout her tenure, Spielman’s enduring focus was on the curriculum. Too often, as she outlined early in her time at Ofsted, teachers were leaving pupils ‘with a hollowed out and flimsy understanding’.

Kemi Badenoch’s victory was not overwhelming. Her margin of victory was smaller than of any of her Tory predecessors since the current leadership rules were introduced. With the support of 57 per cent of the membership and a third of MPs – similar proportions to what Liz Truss managed in 2022 – her immediate task will be to unite her querulous parliamentary party and reach out to her opponents. Her finishing cry – ‘It’s time to get down to business, it’s time to renew’ – is familiar from the campaign trail. The most immediate task is building a shadow cabinet. James Cleverly’s choice to go to the backbenches frees a space but leaves an obvious alternative leader untainted by her leadership if she stumbles in the coming years.

Is Kemi Badenoch running scared? It’s not an accusation often levelled at the shadow housing secretary, who is usually criticised for being too keen on a scrap. Badenoch’s campaign team say she wants to tell the Conservatives ‘hard truths’, and that she is the opponent Keir Starmer would most dread across the despatch box. But for all her pugnaciousness, Badenoch isn’t the candidate pressing for a face-off with her opponent. Badenoch has no need to debate, and it makes tactical sense for her to avoid it Yesterday Robert Jenrick asked the BBC to host a TV debate between him and Badenoch. He is apparently happy to debate his rival ‘any time, anywhere’, but ‘sources close to’ Badenoch say she is keener to spend her time meeting members.

Jonathan Gullis is a happy man. 'Good news!' the ex-Tory MP for Stoke-on-Trent North wrote following reports that Priti Patel, the former Home Secretary, is to run for the Tory leadership. 'Priti can unite the Conservative Party, take the fight to Starmer’s Labour, and win back the trust of voters', Gullis claimed. That's quite the prospectus, for a party in such a shattered state. If reports in the Daily Telegraph are correct, Patel has been 'urged to run' by fellow MPs and already has 'a campaign team funded by ‘high-profile Tory donors”. She plans to launch her bid for the top job by the end of next week. In standing by Boris Johnson to the last, Patel co-owned his failures Patel has obvious virtues.

In the end, there was little reason why England fans might have wanted to hang around after yesterday’s Euros final, except to bum an Estrella off a celebrating Spaniard. But in the unlikely event that football had come home, those of us watching in London would have been left high, if not necessarily dry, by London’s ‘world-leading’ police force and public transport network. Yesterday afternoon, at the helpfully late time of 3.51 p.m, the Met warned football fans travelling into central London to avoid street drinking. Having issued an antisocial dispersal order, those congregating in the street with a beer could be made to move on. It also suggested pubs were full, so it might be an idea to watch at home.