Kemi Badenoch has six months to save the Tories – and her leadership, MPs warn
Kemi Badenoch has been warned she has six months to turn the Conservative Party around or face leadership trouble.
As he marks his first year as leader, senior Tory sources said: Independent He said that if the party did another poor result in elections to local councils in Wales, Scotland and England in May, Ms Badenoch would have to leave and Robert Jenrick would be the favorite to replace her.
While Ms Badenoch has produced some good performances at Prime Minister’s Questions in recent weeks and has been widely praised for her conference speech, critics have noted that she has failed to improve the Conservative Party’s historically low position in the polls.
A senior Tory source said: “We were averaging 17 points in the polls before Kemi’s speech and we were averaging 17 points in the polls after Kemi’s speech. Nothing’s changed and we’re not going anywhere with her.” It is also regularly mentioned that the year before he was leader, the party’s average vote share was around 24 percent.
Meanwhile, a shadow minister complained he was largely stranded again after a conference speech in which he announced a range of policies including the abolition of stamp duty.
They said: “He gave a half-decent speech at the conference and now thinks he can hibernate all winter. He forgets that he is the leader of the opposition, not a hedgehog.”
Another reviewer described Ms Badenoch as the “living dead” whose end “everyone is waiting for”.
They added: “There may be a movement against him in January or February as the reality of electoral oblivion sets in, but it will probably be May now – but not later.”
But one desperate MP expressed fear that “if we wait until May it may be too late.”
The veteran MP added: “Robert [Jenrick] clearly has more energy, more focus, and better ideas. “At the moment we are adrift and if this continues we will be finished because Reform will have established itself in people’s minds as the main party of the centre-right.”
Since Ms Badenoch became leader, Nigel Farage has seen a steady stream of departures from the Conservatives towards Reform UK. Notable scalps include MP Danny Kruger, who served as a shadow minister under Ms Badenoch, and former Conservative Party chairman Sir Jake Berry; but there are also dozens of councilors who have switched allegiances, including 20 at the Conservative Party conference last month.
The parliamentary party has been speculating about which colleague will be the next to be announced as a Reformation defector, with some said to be ready to pass.
While there is appetite among some Conservative MPs for a leadership change to stem the rise of Reform and allow the party to reposition itself as a challenger, there are also concerns that the public will not forgive the party if it opts for another leadership change, given that Ms Badenoch is the fifth person to take charge of the Conservative Party since 2019.
“We’ll look like fools if we change leaders again,” said one MP, adding: “It’s like not liking the Brexit result and trying to change it, you’re making people angry by trying that.”
“It was a real problem to have the reality that we change our leader so frequently during the elections knocking on the doorstep. Kemi needs time.”
Pollsters believe things are improving in terms of public recognition for the Conservative Party leader, but this does not translate into positive support for his party.
Tory peer and pollster Robert Hayward said the latest council byelection results showed Ms Badenoch “may be turning a corner”, noting that a recent YouGov poll showed she had 51 per cent approval among Conservative voters.
Pollster Professor Sir John Curtice acknowledged his increasing public recognition but warned: “The problem is that this does not translate into an increase in his popularity. So for every voter who likes him, there is an elector who doesn’t.”
He suggested Ms Badenoch should do more to “reject Boris Johnson and Liz Truss” to boost her credibility among voters, especially “because she is focused on the economy”.
“People need to believe that they have a plan for the economy and that they are competent enough to do it, but they just don’t have it yet,” he said.
The Conservative Party leader’s problems are revealed in a secret memo. Independent It found that the party appeared to have lost touch with many grassroots organisations.
An email sent to association parties by Conservative Campaign HQ said: “There is still a lot of information missing from associations across the country.”
There are 131 associations (out of 600) where Conservatives do not currently have an office email address.
