4 reasons for Kemi Badenoch to be cheerful — and 3 looming headaches

BIRMINGHAM, England — Britain’s Conservatives don’t get many opportunities to feel upbeat these days — but Kemi Badenoch is heading into party conference with a modest spring in her step.

The Tory leader — who in 2024 took over an outfit near-obliterated by its worst general election result in history — can point to disarray in her chief rival’s ranks, decent personal ratings and some clear dividing lines with Labour as just a few reasons to be cheerful.

Yet it’s still a massive road back for the once-dominant center-right party. Let POLITICO give you the view from Tory land as the West Midlands gathering gets going in earnest.

On the upside

1) Badenoch’s personal ratings are on the up

The British public’s view of the Tory leader has improved sharply since she took over.

YouGov polling last month found 32% of voters now have a favorable view of Badenoch, compared to 47% who view her unfavorably.

It’s hardly stirring stuff, but that net rating — of minus 15 — is 20 points higher than a year ago. And that is beginning to vindicate some party strategists’ belief that the more the public sees of Badenoch, the more it likes her.

Badenoch also has no serious internal competitor trying to remove her, following Robert Jenrick’s defection to right-wing populist Reform UK earlier this year. Jenrick narrowly lost the Tory leadership race to Badenoch in 2024, and was widely seen as hankering for her job before his abrupt departure to Nigel Farage’s army.

“Compared to last year when lots of people were sharpening their knives to bring Kemi down, going into this conference the mood is actually very good,” said one Tory adviser, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Kemi has found her voice and is doing well in taking the fight to Labour.”

2) Farage has had a messy summer

The party’s year has also been helped by the trials and tribulations of their chief opponents.

The Conservatives’ main competitors on the right, Reform UK, enjoyed stellar results at May’s local elections, and there was serious talk of them eclipsing the Tories as the U.K.’s real opposition.

Since then, however, Farage has faced months of scrutiny about his party’s finances, and spent the summer campaigning in a self-imposed by-election entirely focused on his own position.

“A year ago, it felt like Reform UK had cannibalized the British right behind them, whereas now that seems much more up for grabs,” says Keiran Pedley, the U.K. director of politics at polling company Ipsos. “It doesn’t mean that the Tories have won that argument, but at least there is an argument to be had.”

Reform UK still leads the Tories in national voting intention, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls, and it has gained a real toehold in local government that will help it build out an election-fighting machine.

But, says Pedley: “If you’re a voter on the right of politics in Britain, maybe as you become less impressed by Nigel Farage, you’re also looking to Kemi Badenoch, hoping that she can be the answer.”

Farage was widely criticized for failing to declare a £5 million gift he received from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne in the 12 months before he became an MP, while there’s been a fresh flood of cash to Reform UK in recent months.

In an eve-of-conference interview with the Tory-supporting Spectator magazine, Badenoch claimed the megabucks donations have “encouraged quite a few people to give us a bit more” to stay on the field.

3) She’s stamped her authority on the Tory top team

Badenoch revamped her Shadow Cabinet at the tail-end of the summer recess in a bid to take the fight to Labour under new Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

Mel Stride, who fought the 2024 leadership contest and was a staunch loyalist to ex-PM Rishi Sunak, was replaced as shadow chancellor by Andrew Griffith. Griffith spent decades in business before working for Boris Johnson, and though Labour has leapt on his time as Treasury minister during former Prime Minister Liz Truss’ budget meltdown, the Tories believe his private sector experience adds real heft.

Priti Patel — a Boris Johnson-era Cabinet big-hitter — was moved out of her role as shadow foreign secretary, in favor of the well-respected Tom Tugendhat, an ex-security minister who also chaired the Commons’ Foreign Affairs Committee.

Though a more centrist, one-nation Conservative, he has accepted Badenoch’s more hardline policies, like pushing to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.

“At our conference, we will show the country that the Conservative Party is different from the one that lost the last election,” a Tory spokesperson said. “We will set out our plan to reverse Labour’s economic decline, build a stronger economy and a stronger country, and get Britain working again.”

4) Andy Burnham has opened up space for a grey vote challenge

The biggest announcement from Burnham’s first conference speech as Labour leader has the potential to be a gift to the Tories, who have long felt able to rely on support from Britain’s older voters.

Burnham has vowed to reform the “triple lock” — introduced by the Tories when they were last in office and all but guaranteeing generous annual state pension rises — a move that opens up space for the Conservatives to go on the attack.

Privately, plenty of Tories would love to make the same move, because of the strain the triple lock places on the country’s public finances. “Literally no MP or party official think keeping the triple lock is a good thing,” the same adviser quoted above said. “It just boxes the party and the leadership in.”

But that hasn’t stopped Badenoch and her team from going straight on the attack. “His proposal to change the triple lock is already falling apart under scrutiny, and it won’t generate enough savings to fund a nationalized care system for another two decades, which means more tax rises are inevitable,” she said of Burnham last week.

On the downside

1) The Tories haven’t broken through in national polls

Despite Badenoch’s improved personal position, the Conservatives still lag in national polls and don’t appear anywhere close to forming a House of Commons majority after the next election.

POLITICO’s Poll of Polls has seen the party slip into third place behind Labour and Reform UK ever since Keir Starmer’s resignation as PM. Hovering around the 18% to 19% mark, they’re still polling lower than the national 23.7% vote share Rishi Sunak sank to in 2024.

Pedley warns there’s a difference between voters liking Badenoch as leader and believing the Tories have “the right plans, the right team of leaders [and are] ready to govern the country credibly in the future.”

2) A divided right could give Labour a hand

Even with Reform UK’s bumpy summer, Farage’s party is a national contender — and splitting the right-wing vote in some constituencies could let Labour or the Lib Dems cruise through the middle.

So far, the Conservatives and Reform UK have both insisted there will be no electoral alliance between the pair.

The Tories argue it’s impossible to work with Reform UK thanks to Farage’s history of falling out with once-close allies, while Reform UK sees the Tories as damaged goods who’ve wrecked the country. (That hasn’t stopped them grabbing a fair few defectors, of course.)

3) The specter of Brexit returns

Burnham also made closer relations with the European Union a key part of his conference pitch — thrusting a largely dormant part of British political discourse back to the centre.

And it’s a divisive one for the Tories, who have spent decades riven by splits about the EU. While many former supporters of staying in the bloc have now left the Conservatives, the increased salience of Europe could reopen old wounds.

Polling shows many voters believe Brexit — which the Tories presided over — hasn’t gone well. That’s not the same as wanting to rejoin altogether, but the Conservatives may now be forced to defend a project they’d just about moved on from.