The Tories are still on life support – so why is Badenoch in celebratory mood? | Conservatives
By any sane person’s calculation, the Conservative Party had a night to forget in Thursday’s local, mayoral and devolved elections. In England, it lost nearly 500 councilors and handed control of three local authorities to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK; He lost out to right-wing upstarts in England, Wales and Scotland. So why is Kemi Badenoch hailing these results as evidence that “the Tories are back” and why do so many Tory MPs seem to agree with her?
The Conservative leader was vocal on Friday about his party’s remarkable gains in politically unconventional London, where the Conservatives won back the Westminster totemic council, took the most seats on Wandsworth council and fended off the Reformation threat in Bexley and Bromley.
But the damage to the backyard of Essex, where Badenoch and five other shadow cabinet ministers are MPs, was hard to ignore. The reform ended the party’s 25-year reign in local government, capturing Tory-held Newcastle-under-Lyme and Suffolk and making advances in East and West Sussex.
In parts of southern England, including Surrey, the party suffered losses at the hands of the Liberal Democrats. In Wales he received just 11% of the vote; this was the lowest vote share ever in the Senedd. In Scotland, its vote share fell by 10.1 percentage points compared to the -2.4 points suffered by Labour.
Twenty-four hours after his impassioned return message, Badenoch softened his tone with a sober opinion piece. Telegram speaking more softly about “green shoots” and perhaps being conscious that hundreds of Conservative councilors were reading his words pessimistically.
“Despite the setbacks, I am encouraged by our results this week,” he wrote. “The Conservative party is rebuilding steadily, seriously and purposefully. We do not ask people to forget the past, but to judge us by what we do next.”
Over the weekend, repeated Tory talking heads pointed out: Sky News’ vote share forecasts Reform (which takes each party’s vote share in the UK council elections and projects them into a nationwide vote) leads with 27% of the vote, while the Conservatives are in second place with 20%. Last year, under the same tracking, the party was 15 points behind Reform. (They tend not to mention that BBC analysisReform comes first with 26% of the votes, the Greens come second with 18%, the Conservatives and Labor parties come in second with 17%, and the Liberal Democrats come in second with 16%.)
Tory election expert Robert Hayward said the optimism was real. His Conservative colleague, who first described the phenomenon of “shy Tories” before the 1992 election, noted Badenoch’s positive note about the successes in London, which has always determined the mood in Westminster to some extent, the increase in vote share and why the party faithful were feeling surprisingly cheerful.
“There is a feeling that Kemi has been laying the groundwork over the last few months and despite the big losses in Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk it could have been worse,” he said. He added that many party members felt only relief after the disastrous results in 2025.
“The Conservative party can’t fool itself that there are no difficulties. We’re in a bad situation in Scotland. We’re in a bad situation in Wales. There are a number of councils that don’t have Conservative councillors, but there’s a huge sense of relief that they’ve pretty much picked themselves up off the ground and can still breathe.”
Badenoch’s (relative) popularity is repeatedly boosted by Conservative MPs. Last month the think tank More in Common discovered that he was the most popular party leader-9 in net positivity. latest YouGov tracker It found that 29% of Britons viewed it favorably, its highest rating to date, and was “part of a steady trend of improvement in attitudes since the middle of last year”.
His neighbour, Basildon and Billericay MP Richard Holden, says people like Badenoch are on his doorstep. “I had a Reform candidate who even during the count said they were really impressed with Kemi,” he said. When asked whether he would retain his seat, which he won with only 20 votes in the 2024 general elections, he said: “There is a lot of work to be done, but after these election results, I am more confident than before.”
Political commentator Henry Hill said the slowdown in the loss of Tory support meant Badenoch was less likely to face a leadership challenge, but Badenoch’s position had strengthened with Robert Jenrick’s switch to Reform.
“There is no rival,” he said. “The party is also very committed to finding a positive outcome because there really is no alternative at the moment.”
But he added that although the Conservatives were no longer on life support, the party was extremely ill and the national vote was still lower than in the 2024 general election. “If we were to question this as ‘Is the Conservative Party going to die?’ “If you measure it as, then collapse looks less likely than it did a year ago,” he said. “But if you have ambitions beyond that, it’s not clear that the party is really on the road to recovery.”
