Dr Patrick English is Director of Political Analytics at YouGov, and their spokesman on political research.
A year ago, in the lead up to the 2025 Conservative Party Conference, the court of public opinion was an extremely tricky place to be for Kemi Badenoch and her party.
Our YouGov MRP in September of that year had the Conservatives down on just 45 seats, with Reform UK in touching distance of a majority on 311. Kemi Badenoch’s personal ratings with public were poor, with a net favourability score of -35 making her more unpopular than Nigel Farage at the time.
Badenoch was even on dodgy ground with her own party faithful. Our Tory members poll released during their conference last year suggested that 50 per cent of members wanted her to step down as leader before the next election, compared to 46 per cent who wanted her to remain in position.
But much has changed in a year.
Last week, our latest MRP had the Conservatives back in second place in our central model projection, pushing Reform (just) into third. Up 84 seats in a year, the constituencies we now would expect the Conservatives to win if an election were being held tomorrow include symbolic wins over Reform defectors including Robert Jenrick in Newark and Suella Braverman in Wareham and Waterlooville.
Kemi Badenoch has also seen significant improvements in her own personal ratings among the public as well, rising up to -15 in the latest YouGov data. Andy Burnham, for reference, sits at +7, with Farage at -45.
It’s understandable then why there is a certain spring in Conservative steps as they, the media, us pollsters, and representatives from the rest of the political bubble head to Birmingham next weekend.
But Prime Minister Andy Burnham has thrown down a rather significant number of challenges at Kemi Badenoch’s feet. Since coming in, Labour’s own fortunes have changed dramatically from where they were under Keir Starmer.
Back in September 2025, our MRP projected a mere 144 seat wins for then Starmer’s party. This autumn, we project that if an election were held right now, Burnham’s Labour would be comfortably the largest party in a hung parliament on 241 seats.
As well as reversing declining electoral fortunes, Burnham has thrown down some serious policy gauntlets to Badenoch and her party. Not least the issue of triple lock reform. It isn’t entirely clear what the actual extent of the proposed Labour changes are to the system, but they certainly involve at least decoupling pensions from earnings from the way it currently works.
Triple lock reform sounds like instinctively an easy thing to oppose for a party whose base is the oldest of any major British political party, but it isn’t that simple – many commentators and high-profile supporters around the party have long argued for reforms to the state pension system, and many have in turn expressed support in principle for Burnham now opening up that conversation (even if, as above, we don’t quite know how close to a double lock or a triple lock the policy will eventually land).
And while polling pre-Burnham speech suggested that any attempts to ‘abolish’ or ‘remove’ the triple lock would met with strong public opposition, snap YouGov polling on the changes announced by Burnham during his speech found that the British public support his proposed plans in principle by a margin of 43 per cent support versus 31 per cent opposed, rising to 48 per cent – 28 per cent when the social care spending element of the policy is introduced.
Even 39 per cent of people of pensionable age support the policy, as with 38 per cent of 2024 Conservative voters. Thus, rather unexpectedly, Burnham’s proposed pension reforms have created the dreaded political headache scenario for Kemi Badenoch – diving her own base.
Of course, these are only snap results. Should Badenoch and Conservatives wish to continue their opposition to changing the triple lock, they will now (at least according to Burnham, for now) have three years to try win that argument ahead of it being in a Labour manifesto and turn public support into opposition.
The same goes with each of electoral reform (which gets 45 per cent -27 per cent public support over opposition), closer alignment between Britain and the EU (which ranges from 73 per cent support to 59 per cent support, depending on how close that alignment becomes), and a social care service paid for by general taxation (74 per cent-11 per cent support-oppose).
Taking on Labour and Burnham and changing public opinion on all four might be an uphill battle perhaps, but Badenoch has never shied away from those. This Conservative party conference offers Badenoch her first big chance at setting her stall out in response to the new Labour’s leader’s challenge.