There is a school of thought that ConservativeHome should always be critical. ‘Otherwise,’ they argue, ‘what’s the point?‘
I do not subscribe to this. It’s as absurd a suggestion as it would be to only choose puff pieces approved by CCHQ.
This does not happen and will not happen. No useful analysis is all one or all the other.
I can reveal that items that appear on our pages often annoy the Conservative leader’s team as much as they might Labour, or Reform. I haven’t had a call from the Liberal Democrats but we don’t often hear about them unless it’s Reform outriders saying that everyone in the Conservative party is one.
Yawn.
It’s mainly trotted out, by those who already decided they won’t vote Conservative anymore, and aren’t genuinely interested in how the party is changing, and having convinced themselves it can’t or won’t. They can barely name seven out of more than a hundred who they could even try to pin this label on, and all of those reject it completely.
Ask some who were not Badenoch supporters at first if they are determined to sabotage her aims if in power, and I’ll refer you to the answer given by someone who has faced that charge:
“Fat chance! Have you met her? I might disagree on occasions but she’s good and she’s bloody tough. There’s no way she’d stand me trying that kind of mucking about. It’d be all over for me very fast I can tell you”
Two activists may have recently defected to the Lib Dems, but there won’t be any great exodus from within Parliament because it’s tired nonsense.
ConHome has been and will always remain completely independent of the Conservative Party and as such has the freedom to be critical, critical friend, or friend. We do not censor views from any wings or standpoint, nor does the site have any fixed view bar my own as outlined when I started – I want a Conservative party that believes in itself, can win, and actually do what it says it wants to. Beyond that readers must judge for themselves.
I don’t believe Reform can, or Labour will, do what’s required. I’m not sorry for that, but we must question the Conservatives too.
When Tim Montgomerie started this site 21 years ago, one part of his mission was for the Conservative grassroots to have more of a voice and that mission remains. It is also to provide an ‘under the hood’ look at how the Conservatives are fairing and to assess how successful, or not, this process of renewal is. It is also to allow Conservatives to comment freely in articles where they think the direction is right, and where it might be wrong.
And they do – day after day.
Sometimes it only takes one article to send some into a wild valedictory spasm of “at last proof ConHome thinks X!” It becomes like watching a conspiracy theorist fingering a banana claiming it’s a smoking gun.
Beware an overdose of junior-Asprin and have a lie down.
There are a gaggle of media commentators who do think Badenoch is wrong. It’s earned them ,rightly or wrongly, the title ‘the boys who hate Kemi’, most of whom even before day one in the job wrote her off as ‘useless.’ You can’t please all of the people all of the time.
There are conservative commentators who stuck with the ‘Calamity Kemi’ prism and extended it: ‘Here’s how despite those thinking she might be getting this right, she’s definitely still wrong.” Some are convinced by their own perspicacity but others can’t admit they’ve always done this with anyone; the ‘unbovvered cool kid’ slouched at the back who tries to make the rest of the class feel they should be grateful they even showed up.
I wrote back in June why I like Kemi Badenoch as leader, and did so because I myself had doubts, at first. The style and confidence we were expecting took too long to emerge. Part of the motivation for writing it was because two of the reasons I think she is right were neither complimentary or critical – but objectively obvious.
First, her strategy is probably the only viable one. Other options fall short or are no less uncertain (most more so).
Others might have sounded different, had different styles, but I suspect might have ended up in a similar place, or close. The times are dictating certain directions are closed off.
Her strategy at the moment is leading on her values – still her most viral clip is confronting a left wing protestor who blamed everything on the ‘the Right’ with the words “I am the Right” and made it abundantly clear she thought the young woman was wrong.
But the second reason is Badenoch believes she is right whilst knowing full well, there is no inevitability about success.
Every step forward has to be earned, and each future step carries a failure risk.
I like what she’s doing because we don’t know it will work.
In the film Zero Dark Thirty a Navy SEAL who is about to risk his life and liberty storming Osama Bin Laden’s lair – without knowing even if he’s there – asks his brother SEAL what convinced him to trust the risky mission. He points at the CIA analyst who wants to send them:
“Her Confidence”
The fact Badenoch could be wrong has to be engaged with. I can’t prove she’ll be right, it’s just my best judgement that I think she’ll could turn out to be. It’s not perfect, hell, I think even she might quietly admit that but overall it her approach has a logical sense.
Contrast that doubt checking process with the ardent support Reformers give their leader. It’s a support that doesn’t question, defends everything whatever it might be. They behave as if their beliefs are under attack, not scrutiny, in some lethal test of faith. Desperate to be unshakeable in that faith they must repeat the mantra that their victory is both unstoppable and inevitable.
Hubris, has an unpopular twin who always turns up late, and in a nasty mood. In Reform this summer it has claimed victims. It may still do.
I don’t believe in the church of inevitability. It denies agency to alter the future.
Reform’s Zia Yusuf observed recently that “Reform is like a garden weed …you can’t kill us“. In a sense he is right.
You can try to suppress a weed. You can thrash at it – much as Starmer did at the last Labour Conference – but that tends to just help the weed spread further.
Know the best way to get rid of weeds? Grow better plants that people like more.
Cross pollination at this point seems both undesirable and ineffective – see Lord Ashcroft’s polling this morning.
But if they and Burham’s Labour are so sure, we must engage with the question:
What if they are right? And Badenoch’s Conservatives are wrong?
There are those who point to the Tories polling higher in September 2024, that at any time under her leadership. There are those who say her personal rating being net positive is all very well but if the brand stubbornly refuses to shift, then she’s stymied. It has shifted up, but painfully slowly and by small amounts and nothing like as much as needed and some insist, they are stuck. They still come third in a number of polls despite a couple that had them above Reform – but within the ‘margin of error’.
There are those who think she’s saddled her self with the un-sustainability of the pensions triple lock.
To the right of her some crow she has no hope of winning back anybody who has chosen to vote Reform from now on and to the her left (which I think is an objectively fair description) she is warned by Prosper that the real votes are to be found in the centre and not on the right.
Some say abolishing stamp duty was not enough to build a solid home of new policies and others that abolishing Inheritance Tax is a mistake. Actually I don’t agree. I have a fundamental issue with a lifetime of taxed assets being taxed again and all under the centuries’ old canard that the state should have the right to whatever it wants and has somehow ‘proved’ historically it is best placed to spend wisely. Don’t get me started on that.
There are those in Reform who, despite evidence to the contrary, claim she’s just copying them, or that she personally might advocate the right policies but will be prevented from doing any of it, if in power, by ‘powerful’ cabal of Lib Dem sleeper agents, again.
Some say she’s wrong to make all MPs and candidates sign up to reversal of the Climate Change Act and leaving the ECHR, and others that if she doesn’t rid herself of those don’t agree she’ll never their vote back.
Labour’s Tris Osborne, in a display of language he’d never use about a male colleague tweeted:
“Her tone is shrill, bossy and hectoring“.
The Prime Minister thinks she should stop ‘point scoring’ and work on how Parliament solves problems together – forgetting that is neither her job, nor a sign of his strength.
Now it’s possible, all these critics are right, and she is wrong. I have to say in most cases I suspect either their motives or the solidity of their analysis but it has to be a question. If the Conservatives ask it of themselves, constantly stress testing their work then that’s a strength. Acknowledging the risks of failure is how you prevent failures.
It’s also worth acknowledging the stakes are incredibly high. The Conservatives cannot afford to be wrong. Neither for different reasons can the country. Reform can now afford £72million pounds of campaigning rocket boosters. Campaigning at scale, for years is phenomenally expensive – they need it.
The money comes from two crypto billionaires, one of whom had legal trouble in the US and the other gave Farage five million pounds as a ‘gift’. Reform already has a detailed pro-crypto policy – to slash CGT on it to 10 per cent, and reduce scrutiny of its flow – and yet haven’t got a health or defence spokesman.
If that’s ‘iffy’, equally so would be an attempt by Labour to make proposed donations cap legislation retrospective – whilst of course exempting the Trade Unions. The Tories aspire to beat Reform, Labour want to block them.
However up pops Zia again to complain Badenoch is wrong in not saying anything about it. She can never be right in his world, about anything.
Badenoch herself has repeatedly told Conservatives that her path is not about right, left or down the middle but one marked Conservative. That she is defining that is entirely her right as leader. She aims to unite people under a clear set of Conservative values from which policy flows. I get that people might not like every option agreed upon, but in this five-party landscape, overall it seems a reasoned and reasonable position.
I’m increasingly convinced that if she’s wrong, then certainly the party and sadly the country will be in a whole lot of trouble.