Tory leader Kemi Badenoch used her keynote speech to deliberately frame the next election as a “battle for the soul of this nation” between Labour and the Conservatives, conveniently ignoring Reform UK.
At their annual conference in Birmingham, the Tories have used a strategy designed to capitalise on polling showing that twice as many voters trust the Tories on the economy as Nigel Farage’s party. The hope is to portray the Tories as the natural right-wing opposition to Labour. Her party, Badenoch pointed out, was 200 years old and had met “every single challenge in every single age”. She compared the Tories to M&S, once written off as stuffy and unviable, now hosting its own runway shows.
“M&S is back in fashion. Just like M&S, we must learn from our mistakes, win back trust and make people feel good about our party again,” she said.
A confident Badenoch showed she is by far the best of the bunch. No wonder the party loves her. The rest of them are like a bunch of energy-saving lightbulbs, competing at the conference this week to see who can offer the lowest-wattage speeches to empty halls.
Guest speaker Jeremy Clarkson made possibly the best joke when he told delegates half of them had come dressed as seats. They even raised the floors in some rooms to trick the eye into thinking the rooms were full. But the non-existent queues at the conference bar told their own story.
Like children scaring themselves with ghost stories, the Tories tell themselves there might be an election next year. Belying this is a deliberate mid-term approach showing how the Tories are actually positioning themselves. Announcements were aimed at “people who have got quite sick of being juiced every year”, by Labour over successive budgets and are worried about the upcoming one, according to one member of the Shadow Cabinet. These are both Liberal Democrats and Labour voters who turned against the Tories in 2024 for their 14 years of mistakes, but could be wooed back.
The big-ticket announcements include the removal of the £100,000 childcare tax cliff edge, a pledge to scrap the Labour Government’s planned “mansion tax” on homes worth more than £2m and an “aspiration” to reform the tax system to end the 60 per cent marginal tax rate on earnings between £100,000 and £125,140.
Badenoch saved her most popular announcement until last. Inheritance tax, she argued, “was supposed to be a tax on the super wealthy” but instead is “a tax on ordinary middle-class people in all corners of our country”.
“The Conservatives are and always have been the party of home ownership,” Badenoch added. “On top of that, couples will be able to leave £1m tax free. These changes mean every inheritance tax bill will be cut and the number of families paying inheritance tax will fall by more than half.”
She said: “No stamp duty when you buy your home, no mansion tax when you live in your home and no inheritance tax on your home when you pass it on to your children or grandchildren. That is what the next Conservative government will deliver.”
Senior Tories deny these policies will alienate people who think the Tories are merely going after wealthy voters at the expense of the working-class support that delivered Boris Johnson his 2019 majority. Not true, according to one strategist. “People who are directly affected by the policies we have announced this week will notice what we are doing. People who aren’t don’t notice what doesn’t affect them and aren’t paying attention to us yet,” the Tory source said.
And a member of the Shadow Cabinet said it’s necessary for the Tories to attract criticism to attract attention. “People want to see us taking some flak, that is how we build credibility,” the senior Tory said.
An improvement in Badenoch’s personal approval ratings has energised the Tory conference into a chipper mood. “We’re happy again because Rob [Jenrick] is not casting his shadow. She is free from the backbiting about her leadership.”
“We have had an export boom,” Badenoch joked about the Tories who have defected to Reform. And even though Badenoch may be a seasoned speaker, she still relied on a prompt in the autocue to “pause, side eye”, to tee up a joke about George Cottrell, an aide to Nigel Farage, being said to call the Reform leader “daddy”.
Nevertheless, in Birmingham the mood was chipper. Another member of the Shadow Cabinet said: “She’s taking us in the right direction, and the mood is contagious.” The problem, however, for the B-list Tories, is that so far her self-proclaimed “Kemistry” hasn’t trickled down to them.
The country may be starting to like Badenoch, but the compliment certainly hasn’t extended to her party, which won just 121 seats at the last election and needs at least 200 more to win a majority. At the conference, Badenoch was mobbed by young Tories who, amoeba-like, apparently keep reproducing. Behind the security ring of steel, there was a sense that Farage can’t get in. Even senior Tories, who should know better, are blithely predicting the next election might be fought along traditional two-party lines.
“If Reform keeps collapsing like a blancmange, then the next election could be us versus Labour again,” one veteran Tory MP said. An advisor to Badenoch remarked: “Burnham would like it if it was Labour versus Tory again. He thinks he can beat us.”
Pinning their hopes of revival on a Reform collapse is not as mad as it sounds. According to More in Common figures, just a 2 per cent swing away from Reform is needed for the Tories to win 200 seats. Even so, the party is currently third in opinion polls on 20 per cent, below their 23.7 per cent in the 2024 general election wipeout.
And so, there is a lot of wishful thinking going on. Another former Tory Cabinet minister said they didn’t believe Farage would ever be able to make use of the £72m in donations Reform had recently received because they will be inadmissible under the law. They were apparently unaware Farage not only has the funds but is already spending them on a hiring spree.
Nonetheless, Badenoch delivered a reasoned, confident speech. With her inheritance tax pledge, she certainly knows the home crowd. Within her own party she’s unassailable. But hosing down the optimism in their bubble is the blunt reality that the Tories are miles from power.
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