“Korben sweetheart, what was that? It was BAD! It had no fire, no energy, no nothing! Y’know I got a Show to run here, and it must pop POP POP!”
Ruby Rhod “The Fifth Element” (1997)
It’s not over yet, and maybe, that’s the point.
I doubt it is intentional, indeed I know Kemi Badenoch’s team are rather disappointed with ‘the mentions in despatches’ that have been in the press and on the airwaves about this Conference, but if they wanted to put a lot of focus on the leader, on the last day, they have.
The problem with this Conservative party Conference has been that if the intention was to show case a new team, a new party, it has so far been a Conference of Conservatives for Conservatives.
It’s been neither fish nor fowl.
No, there is no psychodrama, but there hasn’t been drama. I’ve not yet felt it ‘pop, POP, POP’
Media tend to come to Conference with ‘the story of Conference’ set in their minds, or to be dug up quickly on arrival on the Sunday. Some of them talk in WhatsApp groups, or just monitor the traffic within those groups, where things are unconsciously shaped, countered and agreed upon without saying so.
Last year in Manchester on the Sunday it was “there’s nobody here” and “this is a do or die week for Kemi Badenoch.” On the Monday huge queues around the block rather squashed the former story but they had to wait until the end for Kemi to land a career saving (and in the end, career making) speech.
I think unintentionally it’s almost happened again in Birmingham.
I walked around the Hyatt Hotel, yesterday, with a prospective candidate for the party and occasional contributor to this site looking for somewhere we could sit down and talk. We could not find a spot, a seat, a table, a sofa to have our chat. This struck me as a physical representation of the problem Andrew Gimson relays in his excellent Conference sketch this morning:
Busy enough that we couldn’t sit down, not so busy we couldn’t freely wander about from space to space without fighting through a huge crowd.
Activists are buzzing with enthusiasm, and a growing confidence, but then they really rather do anyway, but they’re also acknowledging a quite old trope yet articulated by many, not least Oliver Dean yesterday, that they are happy where the party is, given where it was last year, but that no protestors bothered to turn up. It’s a crude metric but a stubborn one that plenty have mentioned to me.
Last year the talk was of whether Kemi could survive, in a leadership contest the loser had decided was far from over. This year the talk is of whether the loser can become a winner again, in another party. The common denominator is not the Conservatives or Reform, but Robert Jenrick, who’s presence here has been reduced to a weeping cartoon boy on a fake Bayeux Tapestry.
But here’s the problem.
“The Conservatives, feel more united than ever, Kemi Badenoch has stamped her authority over the party in the last year, and is doing really well, but there’s a mountain to climb, the polls aren’t great but everyone on the inside is quietly optimistic, we can keep moving forward ” – is emphatically not a media story.
Yes, some Senior Conservatives are quietly happy with that. No ‘act of news has been committed’, nor wanted, and, for example nobody who goes to rural pubs drinks warm beer and has a black Labrador has come out and said at a fringe that people like that are fascists. The messaging is as the party wants it to be, it’s just the media are not that fussed by the message.
A doyen of the political press told me on Monday
“To be honest Giles the Greens Conference was more interesting. This hasn’t got a bad news story or good news story it’s just a bit ‘meh’”
Their metric was that Zack Polanski provided ample further evidence he really isn’t as good as he thought he was, and the Greens for Gaza transformation really means Labour will very probably win the by-election tomorrow. It’s news. Quietly optimistic but recognise the challenges, isn’t.
The Tories don’t have a Zack problem but with swirling discussion about the prospect of a General Election coming sooner do you really want a Conference that has none of that ‘gift on a plate’ news story or do you want the right kind of theatrical, drama that excites not just activists but the outside electorate.
Internally, front pages about the “Iron Dome Lady” during Tory Conference are a big win, but those same message drivers and spinners, have, in the end, been left an absence of oomph.
Don’t let panel formats, run by people not always skilled at chairing panels, become dull. There might be an old school nostalgia for the tub thumping Conference speech but they have their place and the plethora from the platform this year hasn’t quite delivered on the question who is the team Kemi has built around her, and why should I want them back in power.
I know the purpose was to show the joined up team working in shadow cabinet rather than departmental silos, but if you want an idea of whether it worked, watch the shadow Chancellor exit stage left after his speech. He got a good reaction from his leader and the crowd that actually turned up, but then he turned round and walked off and that same crowd wasn’t sure he’d finished. It was all “job done”, but a slightly awkward ‘what happens next’?
Also, it’s great to have Jeremy Clarkson on stage, a chance for theatrical drama of the right sort, and there was in his panel with Victoria Atkins, but ideally your big celebrity guest doesn’t come on and make a joke about empty seats.
So what does happen next?
Kemi gives her speech.
Has it all boiled down once again to “can she inspire the hall and outside the hall” to look once again at her party (her family as she sees it) as an alternative Government?
And arguably the stakes are higher this morning. It’s not about can she show she’s a leader to be reckoned with. We know that. It’s whether she can be seen is a Prime Minister in waiting.
The actual Prime Minister, new to the scene, having spent the 2025 Labour Conference – much as Jenrick spent the last Conservative one – selling the idea of being the leader in waiting, has already set a bar, in a way his predecessor was incapable of, by making his own big speech the talk of the left, and setting the agenda and transforming the political landscape. ‘Best since Blair’ may not be your verdict but it’s the kind of reaction a PM wants.
Of course I don’t believe any of it will work, but he is currently top of the league, and in the last few days the Conservatives still need a big win here in Birmingham to make that credible challenge.
The Home Affairs team make a start this morning and Chris Philp – never knowingly under-energised – will lead the charge there, with a potentially nice joke, if he lands it, to sweeten the crowd.
However can the Captain, come on to the stage, not to chair a discussion or stage a fireside chat, but ‘knock it out of the park’?
Does Kemistry mean more than just a play on words, or that the lady can do the job? Because we all sort of know the answer to that. The party and the country really needs to see that other gear – are you ready to govern? Are we, the electorate, ready to see your entire party in a way they really, really didn’t in 2024?
Last night, a very smart Public Affairs executive told a room of twenty five of his clients, most of whom are not active in politics, or Conservatives, that last year they had asked themselves as a company whether they should even come to Tory Conference, and yet they had decided there really was, not just a point in doing so, but a purpose. All his clients said they’d be back next year too, but conceded they had asked themselves would they need to come this year.
The hosts felt it was worth watching, worth their clients from across sectors, all private businesses seeing what the alternative to Labour might be, a question posed more by a Labour party not being very good, embarrassingly quickly.
One business woman, I think rather unexpectedly to herself, suddenly piped up and gave a passionate and authentic little speech about why she was so inspired by Kemi, that Badenoch in Number 10, felt an instinctive choice because at last someone had emerged from the rather disappointing gene pool of the politics of the last ten years who she wanted to follow all the way to the top.
It was quite sober but almost emotional. Kemi’s comms team would have punched the air. If you could have bottled it and dropped it into everyone’s morning coffee today it would be a heady mix. The kind of good drama these few days have been, frankly, missing.
So once again, and perhaps with a tinge of regret I have to say it, it comes down to the boss delivering on the last day, an absolute barn stormer.
That’s pressure she probably didn’t want, and this Conference wasn’t meant to be all about her, but there it is, it rather is now – by default.
She needs to inspire not just that business woman, but the hall, and the country, and it has to be the right kind of drama – not lead to the wrong kind.
It really must ‘pop, pop, POP’!