Dr Patrick English is Director of Political Analytics at YouGov, and their spokesman on political research.
Kemi Badenoch laid down a significant marker this week in beginning what has been described by some as a ‘purge’ of current MPs and prospective candidates who support either the UK’s Net Zero commitments or its continued adherence to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
It’s a move designed to project strength on behalf of a newly invigorated leadership, who have overseen a rise in Tory polling numbers from mid-teens nadir in 2025 to now somewhere just below their national share achieved in that historic 2024 election defeat.
The move is also seemingly designed to signal to the electorate (and of course the party itself) what kind of Conservative Party is going to be pitching itself to the British public at the next election.
While Badenoch’s manoeuvres here all seem to make sense on these terms, and have brought quite some glee among some Conservative commentators and observers (though not others), there are some tricky angles to this in terms of public opinion which are worth highlighting.
The Conservative political movement Prosper UK, founded by Ruth Davidson and Andy Street, have argued that such a move risks restricting the Conservatives’ ability to build an electoral-winning coalition. By throwing out anyone who is pro-ECHR or pro-Net Zero, they argue, the party narrows its appeal to the electorate and risks alienating potential supporters who will be needed to build a winning voter coalition at the next time of asking.
But there is a more immediate issue beyond the building and maintenance of a future voter coalition capable of winning a British election – these moves will divide the current Tory base.
Let’s begin by casting a wide net: the UK remaining committed to Net Zero and the ECHR enjoy public support, and particularly so in the case of Net Zero. According to the latest YouGov polling, the public believe the UK should maintain its climate commitments by a margin of 63 per cent to 29 per cent. The public also believes that we should remain in the ECHR by a margin of 46 to 29 percent.
Already, taking a stand against both Net Zero and the ECHR is in this sense looks to be a risky electoral move, leaving the Conservatives pitching to under one-in-three voters and potentially pushing away a constituency twice that size. Those one-in-three voters will also be direct targets for Reform UK, who still remain the strongest force on the UK political right despite their recent challenges.
But more specifically and fundamentally, both Net Zero and the ECHR divide the Conservatives’ own voter coalition. According to that same YouGov polling, almost half (48 per cent) for 2024 Conservatives want to the UK to meet its Net Zero commitments. Meanwhile, over a quarter (27 per cent) of 2024 Tory voters support the UK remaining in the ECHR. These voters are not likely to feel well represented by Badenoch’s latest moves.
Driving wedges through a party’s base is usually a tactic deployed by its opponents, rather than its own leadership. It is high risk move which as well as having the primary, immediate effect of carving up and pushing out MPs and would-be MPs, also carves up the party’s own already restricted (compared to years previous) existing voter coalition.
Lord Ashcroft wrote in his piece on this matter about the importance of (to paraphrase) even a broach church having walls. This is fair enough, but does it make sense for said walls to put half of the people who supported you last time out to pasture?
Badenoch’s tactic here has shades of the Labour party’s ill-fated approach toward its own left flank in between 2023 and 2026 – a rather uncompromising shove which drove huge numbers of supporters away from the party, and arguably ultimately cost Keir Starmer his position as prime minister. A cautionary tale, perhaps.
As well, Badenoch and the Conservatives have enjoyed their polling recovery while largely avoiding talking about issues which both divide the public and their own voter coalition base. Tory polling recovery came while Badenoch, Stride, and the rest were hammering the Labour government accusing them of failing on the economy (which 70 per cent of the public agree with), being incompetent (64 per cent agree), and lacking direction (69 per cent agree).
Pivoting away from this and (back) to more divisive – both internally for the party and generally among the public – issues which don’t mobilise anything like an obvious election-winning bloc certainly does project confidence and a sense of strength and clarity on identity, but comes with some rather large public opinion risks.
One potential argument against the case as presented here is that neither Net Zero nor the ECHR are ‘first order’ (or in other words, top priority) issues for Conservative voters.
The latest YouGov most important issues tracker suggests that just 4 per cent of 2024 Tory voters have the environment as one of their top three issues today, for example. YouGov don’t track the ECHR as a priority issue, but you can imagine it would attract around the same level of concern.
But that counter argument can itself be flipped on its head – why spend time carving up a political party and taking uncompromising positions on something that just 4 per cent of its own base care about?
It would also be fair for architects and supporters of these uncompromising positions to point out that the ECHR policy is designed as a tool to address an issue which does concern huge numbers of the public and Conservative voters – immigration. Similarly, it could be argued that the Net Zero positioning is less about an ideological stance against climate change action itself, but one rooted in economics.
Even if we accept that, the prospective danger there is that Badenoch and the Conservatives get bogged down constantly making these two, three-stage arguments and outlining these connections while other parties jump straight to the central issues themselves. Ronald Reagan once said, “if you’re explaining, you’re losing”.
Those are particularly harsh words, but ones which the Conservatives might want to think about if their electoral strategy is to address the two core issues facing voters today through indirect routes.