So it’s finally happened. The grown-ups really are back in charge.
The surprising thing is the grown-up in question has turned out to be Kemi Badenoch. And the party that is finally starting to sound like it has a serious appreciation for the problems facing the nation, and maybe even a plan for addressing them, is the Conservative Party.
A few short months ago that would have seemed fantastical.
In June, Badenoch’s leadership reached its nadir with a childish and damaging attack on Keir Starmer for attending the G7 and Nato summits, rather than Prime Minister’s Questions. In response one of her own MPs, Mark Pritchard, decided the time had come to confront her publicly. ‘It would be better to keep partisan politics out of national security issues’ he chided her openly in the Commons chamber ‘who knows, I may get the Whip withdrawn for saying that, but so be it. There are things that go beyond party politics. I thank the Prime Minister for all his hard work in the national security interests of this country.’
Talking to Tory MPs afterwards, it was clear Pritchard had spoken for many of his colleagues. And it was only a matter of time before the Conservative Party mobilised to remove her.
But that mobilisation has not materialised. A fortnight ago, her tenure as Leader of the Opposition passed an important milestone. On November 2 she had been formally in the post for a year. And under the Tory leadership rules, that was the moment a challenge could have been mounted. A number of Tory MPs had reportedly been counting the days, and planning to submit their letters of no confidence as soon as the appropriate page in the calendar was turned.
But that Ides of November 2 has been, and gone. And while it would be an exaggeration to say shadow ministers are now talking effusively of how Badenoch is a prime minister-in-waiting, there is a consensus she is starting to defy her critics, by stabilising her party and its political trajectory. ‘For the first time in a long time I can now see a scenario where we survive under Kemi,’ one shadow minister revealed to me.
The transformation in Badenoch’s fortunes can be bookmarked by three specific moments. The first was when two unlikely men came riding to her rescue – Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein.
Shadow ministers are now talking effusively of how Kemi Badenoch is a prime minister-in-waiting after surviving her Ides of November
Mark Pritchard decided the time had come to confront Badenoch publicly after her damaging attack on Keir Starmer for attending the G7 and Nato summits
At the start of September fresh emails emerged showing Britain’s Washington ambassador had maintained a closer and longer relationship with the convicted paedophile than had previously been admitted. The emails dropped on the morning of Wednesday, September 10, just before Prime Minister’s Questions.
On one level they seemed damaging for Mandelson and the Government. But the Epstein-Mandelson friendship had been documented at the time, and there seemed to be an element of old news surrounding the saga. As I sat in my space in the Press gallery at PMQs I asked a colleague on one of the daily newspapers what he thought of the issue. ‘Not sure’, he conceded. ‘I can’t work out if there’s something here or not.’
Badenoch knew. After a series of widely derided PMQ sessions she skilfully pinned Sir Keir to the wall over Mandelson. The Prime Minister, clearly unprepared, was defensive and evasive. The scandal duly exploded. And in that instant Badenoch’s leadership came of age.
The second turning point was her speech at last month’s Conservative Party conference. At the start of the conference season the perception was it would be her first and last address as leader to the Tory party faithful. The talk before everyone arrived in Birmingham was that the week would become the effective coronation of the young pretender Robert Jenrick.
But Jenrick’s own over-rehearsed address fell flat. And Badenoch proceeded to stun the hall, and her critics, with an evisceration of Sir Keir and his Government, in a powerful exposition of personal Conservative vision.
‘Rob was getting ready to move’, one Tory MP told me. ‘And you could see him sitting there in the hall thinking “oh s***”.’
The third key moment in Badenoch’s rehabilitation came on Monday, when she rose to respond to Shabana Mahmood’s statement on asylum. The old Badenoch would have simply waded in, lambasting and attacking the Government for its immigration failures.
After a series of widely derided PMQ sessions Badenoch skilfully pinned Sir Keir to the wall over Britain’s Washington ambassador Peter Mandelson
But she did the opposite. She was measured, mature and above all, she was fair. ‘I praise the new Home Secretary’, she said openly. ‘She is bringing fresh energy and a clearer focus to this problem, and she has got more done in 70 days in the job than her predecessor did in a year. She seems to get what many on the Labour benches refuse to accept, and she is right to say that if we fail to deal with the crisis, we will draw more people to a path that starts with anger and ends in hatred.’
In doing so, Badenoch revealed two things. Firstly, that there is still a place for – indeed in many quarters a hunger for – serious debate over the major challenges confronting Britain. And secondly – and perhaps more importantly for a Tory Opposition Leader – that there is more than one way to skin a Labour government.
In the past Badenoch has hurled herself bravely – but blindly – at the massed ranks of the Labour benches. But on Monday she opted to let them do the dirty work for her. Her praise for Mahmood was like a red rag to an enraged socialist bull. Suitably goaded, a succession of Labour MPs rose to lambast their own Home Secretary. And in so doing, fell perfectly into Badenoch’s skilfully prepared trap.
To be clear, Badenoch and her party are not out of the woods. Nor indeed, have they moved that far beyond the central clearing. Her sternest test – next week’s response to Rachel Reeves’s constantly changing Budget – lies ahead.
But she is now at least charting a clear direction of travel for her party. And for the first time since the general election, it doesn’t seem to be pointing towards political oblivion.
Under Badenoch, the Conservative Party – unlike Labour or Reform – can say with a degree of credibility they are trying to confront the economic realities posed by bankrupt Britain. There is now clear evidence from the polls that the Tory death spiral has – at least momentarily – been arrested. And the voters are starting to hear the faint, indistinct, intermittent sound of the Conservative Party’s ECG monitor flickering back into life.
On Monday Badenoch told the House of Commons, ‘We need to be bold, serious and unafraid to do what the British people demand.’ This new bold, serious and unafraid Leader of the Opposition may be about to give Sir Keir – and his craven, shambolic, cowardly premiership – a problem.