Last year, when it looked as if the Tories were set to be overwhelmed by a collapse in their support and a polling surge towards Nigel Farage‘s Reform Party, Kemi Badenoch and her aides convened for a meeting.
In front of them was a simple strategic choice. They could, one senior adviser explained, attempt to outflank Reform on the Right by mimicking their increasingly populist rhetoric and agenda. Or they could challenge it, and start to construct an alternative, distinct message, one rooted in traditional Thatcherite, Conservative values.
Debate ensued. Then Mrs Badenoch finally interjected. ‘We are not like them,’ she said. ‘We are not going to copy them. We are not going to do any deals with them. We are going to take them on.’
Today, in her conference speech, Kemi Badenoch did not just take on Reform. She crushed them.
Over the past few weeks, Mr Farage and his lieutenants have been constructing a new plan to undermine the Tories and their leader. One part of it was to embrace ‘ethno-nationalism’, the idea that it is not possible to be English unless you are white. The other unsavoury aspect of that plan was to point to Mrs Badenoch’s own Nigerian heritage, as a way of insidiously implying she was unfit to lead Britain.
And today that plan blew up in their faces. In a voice straining with genuine anger, Mrs Badenoch declared: ‘I don’t want to live in a country run by people who threaten journalists, call veterans traitors and debate whether my mixed-race children are English. I don’t want to explain to my son, when we’re watching our brilliant England team play football, that some people don’t think our black players are English.
‘I remember back in the day when Ian Wright and John Barnes were playing, nobody was questioning whether they were English. We certainly didn’t have sitting MPs questioning whether they were English.’
Over the past months, as Reform’s lead in the polls has crumbled, some inside and outside of Badenoch’s party have been urging her to reach some form of accommodation with Farage.
Today, in her conference speech, Kemi Badenoch did not just take on Reform. She crushed them, writes Dan Hodges
Mrs Badenoch and her husband Hamish meet the crowd
The couple embrace on stage at the Tory party conference
The Conservative leader has now given her definitive response: ‘We must not let these people take us backwards. That is not the country we are. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but I am black. I am British. I’m proud of my country, I’m proud of our history,’ she stormed. ‘To those who say ‘unite the right’… we are not uniting with THAT!’
Last week Andy Burnham drew plaudits for his address to his party faithful. But his speech contained a series of gaping holes. On welfare. On crime. On defence.
Kemi Badenoch poured concrete into the gaps, then drove a tank right over them. For those on benefits, it was time for ‘tough love’, she announced. Under a Conservative government, they would be given a card that could only be used to purchase essentials. ‘No alcohol. No cigarettes. No gambling,’ she chided, adding: ‘It’s not their money, it’s taxpayers’ money!’
On the economy, she rightly observed: ‘unless we start growing our economy, something is going to break. That is why growing the economy will be the central organising principle of the next Conservative government. We know that a stronger country is built on a stronger economy’.
And she cuttingly inverted Burnham’s PMQs gaffe in which he’d argued national security couldn’t come at the expense of social security, observing: ‘There is no national security without economic security, and there is no economic security without national security’.
But where Badenoch was most astute was in identifying the big opportunity presented by the tactics of both her main opponents. Andy Burnham is currently pitching his message almost exclusively towards the British Left. He believes that if he can reconstruct his Left flank, and pull support from Zack Polanski’s imploding Green Party, then he can nudge his poll rating up to around 30 per cent, just enough to scrape a narrow parliamentary majority.
At the same time Nigel Farage is now speaking solely to the 5 per cent of the electorate who are telling the pollsters they are considering voting Restore. For all practical purposes, he has abandoned any hope of securing his own majority, and is instead focusing on trying to replace the Tories as the official Opposition after the next election.
Which means it’s now only Kemi Badenoch and the Conservatives who are trying to have a conversation with the British people as a whole. Those who run small businesses. Parents. Police officers. Graduates. Farmers. Veterans. Pensioners. In her stirring peroration, each received a name check, and an explanation of why the Tory party was now on their side.
There are obviously risks in her approach. The main policy ‘rabbits’ – the abolition of inheritance tax on all family homes and the provision of free childcare for those earning over £100,000 – have laid her open to the charge that she primarily cares for affluent voters. Her unashamed embrace of Thatcherism may jar with Tory-leaning voters in those Red Wall seats Boris managed to wrestle from Labour in 2019.
And the fact that she delivered the most robust attack on racism – by calling out the extremists sheltering inside both the Greens and Reform – by a major party leader for a generation, will upset those who wanted her to swerve around the nation’s simmering culture war.
But as we saw again today, ducking the major issues is not Kemi Badenoch’s way. ‘I am up for the fight,’ she pledged to her party. And that message is what will ultimately come to define her speech and conference.
This was the moment Badenoch drew the battle lines for the next election. Nigel Farage and Reform have had their moment. But as she brilliantly articulated, they have failed to frame themselves as a serious party of government.
So, the choice facing the country is now clear. Andy Burnham’s unashamed 1970s-style socialism. Or Kemi Badenoch’s bold attempt to reappropriate and recondition Margaret Thatcher’s radical conservatism.
If they are to return to government, Badenoch and her team have a mountain to climb. But after today, whilst the summit towers above them, it is no longer out of reach.