Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.
Let’s take a look at where the polls stand now compared to twelve months ago. The good news is that the gap between the Conservatives and Reform has narrowed to almost nothing — or indeed less than nothing. According to Election Maps UK, we’re currently on an average of 21.8 per cent, just behind Reform who are on 22 per cent. According to equivalent figures for Electoral Calculus, Wikipedia and Politico the cross-over has already happened and we’ve nudged ahead of our rivals.
A year ago we were ten points or more behind Reform. Note well that the closing of that gap isn’t just down to Reform’s precipitous decline. The Conservative polling average was a shade under 18 per cent on the 2 November 2025 — meaning that our vote share today is four points higher. In a multiparty system — and against the background of Andy Burnham’s extended honeymoon — that’s not too shabby.
And the situation looks even better when you translate vote shares into seats. The Election Maps UK Nowcast projection now puts us on 125 seats — so one better than our 2024 result. The projections from Electoral Calculus and PollCheck are 128 and 142.
By the way, the corresponding seat projections for Reform are 52, 57 and 48. From this, we can conclude that our support in the country is more efficiently distributed than theirs — which means that even if we do no better than remain neck-and-neck with them we will still be the second largest party in the Commons and thus the Official Opposition.
Obviously, that’s a poor alternative to actually winning, but it’s a whole lot better than coming third or fourth — which is what we are looking at in 2025. Imagine if it had been Nigel Farage responding to the Budget last week while our leader couldn’t even find a place on the back benches. It was embarrassing enough for Reform, but imagine the humiliation for an erstwhile party of government. I doubt we’d ever recover. Remember the fate of the Liberals, who lost their status as the official opposition on the 21 November 1922. They’ve remained a minor political party ever since.
Shortly before Andy Burnham became Prime Minister, I argued that a snap election would be catastrophic for the Conservatives. It’s not that we hadn’t made some progress in the polls by that point, but it wasn’t enough to stop Kemi Badenoch from losing her position as the Leader of the Opposition — and, most likely, leader of the party. There’s still no room for complacency (and it would be better for us if Burnham doesn’t go to the country early) but a snap election, if it does happen soon, no longer guarantees our downfall as a major political party.
So if anyone tells you that the Kemi-naissance is nothing more than vibes, don’t believe them. We’re still a long way from where we need be, but the last 12 months have made the difference between inevitable decline and the realistic prospect of revival.
But here’s the thing: Kemi Badenoch still needs a new strategy. It’s not because the current one has failed. Rather, its success begs an all-important question: “what comes next?“.
The temptation will be to stick to what we know. However, there’s a case study that ought to give the Conservative leadership pause for thought — that of Reform UK.
When Nigel Farage’s party hit its peak in the summer of 2025, they mistook their rising support as evidence of their own popularity rather than the unpopularity of the other parties. That error was on show during their 2025 annual conference — a self-congratulatory weirdfest that marked the point at which their ratings began to decline. They also ignored the growing antipathy felt towards them among the 60 per cent plus of the electorate that definitely wasn’t going to vote for them — a revulsion that began to crystallise into an increasingly potent tendency to vote tactically against Reform.
But rather than address this and other vulnerabilities, Reform has doubled down on everything voters don’t like about them. Authenticity is one thing, becoming a caricature of yourself quite another — and you can see the result in the downward trend of Reform’s poll ratings.
So am I saying the Conservatives are in a similar position? Not quite, but we do have our own vulnerabilities. Here’s a rundown of the top five.
Numbers one and two I’ll only briefly mention, because I’ve written about them before. So, firstly, the unresolved shame of our last five years in office. Labour MPs are never happier than when the Mini Budget gets a mention in Parliament or the Boriswave or Rishi Sunak’s inability to stop the small boats. Secondly, there’s the long-term threat posed by our continued failure to connect with younger voters — which we also continue to ignore. But before I weep further tears of rage and frustration, let me move on.
Our third vulnerability is a person, namely Andy Burnham. It’s great that the polling gap with Reform has narrowed, but the one with Labour has widened. The governing party is hitting 30% or more in some polls, which given the distribution of votes among the other parties is enough to win Burnham a majority — not to mention a mandate for his European policy (whatever that turns out to be). To make matters worse, there’s a limit to what Kemi Badenoch can actually do about the dramatic improvement in Labour’s position, which is mostly the result of voter movements on the Left.
Short of praying for a revival of the Green Party, the only way to reduce Labour’s lead is to unite the right-of-centre vote. But that brings us to our fourth vulnerability, which is that while Reform have peaked, our rivals are unlikely to fold. Not only do they have the money to carry on, they have a substantial and sociologically distinctive supporter base that, in dozens of seats from the Thames Estuary to parts of the Red Wall, is demographically preponderant. Much like the Lib Dem core in the Remainery South, the next election is likely to prove the existence of a geographical anchor point — let’s call it Farageland — for Reform’s ongoing relevance. The next iteration of the Conservative strategy has to contend with that reality.
Of course, there’s no telling what happens to Reform — or Farageland — after Farage. The party is still extraordinarily focused on one man and who knows how long he’ll be sticking around. But that brings us to the fifth Conservative vulnerability — which is that we too are overly dependent on our party leader.
Yes, we’ve got a much deeper pool of talent to draw upon than Reform have. We can, for instance, fill all of the Shadow Secretary of State positions. But let’s face it, the Kemi-centricity of our party is even more pronounced than it was when I wrote about it in February.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not ungrateful. We’re extraordinarily fortunate to have her. Furthermore, if Labour can base its current revival on one man, why shouldn’t we pin all our hopes on one woman?
The answer, of course, is that we’ve still got to look like a government-in-waiting — and a government is more than one person. At the very least, an aspiring prime minister needs at least two or three colleagues of genuine stature. David Cameron had George Osborne — and his first cabinet boasted two former Conservative leaders, William Hague and lain Duncan Smith, plus one future leader, Theresa May. Tony Blair had Gordon Brown, of course — not to mention other heavy hitters like John Prescott, Robin Cook, David Blunkett and Jack Straw.
Neither Blair nor Cameron were diminished by the big beasts surrounding them — not even when, like Gordon Brown, they strained at the leash. But, so far, Kemi Badenoch lacks an equivalent retinue. She has a capable front bench, plus important backroom personnel — but no one who even comes close to matching her public profile.
There’s one overwhelming reason for this, which is that the last ten years have been exceptionally destructive of the party’s most prominent figures. Consider, for instance, all the individuals who have stood as fully-fledged candidates in one or more Conservative leadership elections since 2016. By my count, there are 24 of these, almost all still below retirement age. And yet, the great majority have fallen by the wayside.
Three have defected to Reform. Of the remainder, thirteen are no longer MPs — of which only one, Penny Mordaunt, seems likely to return. Another three of the 24 have already left Kemi Badenoch’s Shadow Cabinet (James Cleverly, Priti Patel and Mel Stride) and two (Badenoch herself and Tom Tugendhat) are currently in the Shadow Cabinet. That just leaves Rishi Sunak, Jeremy Hunt and Esther McVey.
So who might emerge alongside Badenoch as the big beasts of a renewed Conservative strategy? Of the 24, only Tugendhat (and Mordaunt — if she gets back in). Any others would need to be recruited from a future set of potential leadership candidates.
Several possibilities present themselves. But the time to push them forward as stars, not just shadows, is now.
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