In more than a little example of “events, dear boy, events” our ConservativeHome annual Awards survey has moved from being an interesting reflection of who has caught attention over the past twelve months to being a prism for what has just happened in the past four days.
The survey of Conservative members on the 2025 performance of Conservative MPs was conducted before the events of last Thursday.
Kemi Badenoch’s sacking of Robert Jenrick because she had proof he was about to defect to Reform UK became ‘irrefutable’ because by the end of the day he had. Two clear motivations have been identified beyond those he laid fiercely at the door of his now former party.
First the suggestion his seat of Newark might well be difficult to hold at the next election with Reform polling as they are. Second that the window for another chance at running to be leader again in May, in the wake of predicted difficult results for the Conservatives, had increasingly been closing – largely due to Badenoch’s personal performance as leader since Conference.
Our first award shows this. The Conservative Politician of 2025 is Kemi Badenoch, with 52 per cent of the vote
Robert Jenrick, voted on whilst still in the Conservative Party, and for his performance over 2025 as a Conservative, was second on 25 percent. If ConHome founder Tim Montgomerie initiated talks with Jenrick about a defection in September 2025, then for the last three months of that year Jenrick’s team had seen the same thing happening. Badenoch cementing her leadership week by week.
Her replacement for Jenrick in the Shadow Cabinet, Nick Timothy, got 4.3 per cent before he got the job, no doubt in part for his determined campaign over the lies told by the now retired Chief Constable of the West Midlands over the banning of Israeli football fans coming to a match at Villa Park. It will be interesting over the coming year to see where he sits on our Shadow Cabinet League table.
Katie Lam makes a mark too. When two big characters are absorbing most of the votes 3 per cent for a relative ‘newbie’ is noteworthy. As is that 2.5 percent for Lord Hannan, columnist and peer who has used the Lords to dismantle Government arguments on the Chagos surrender and Assisted Dying. He still wants to see some form of deal with Reform, as he argues in the Telegraph, but after last week that really seems to have been killed off. Largely since ‘killing off’ is now openly Reform’s plan for the Conservative party.
We did not include Badenoch, or indeed some others in our Shadow Cabinet award so as not to confuse the award with our regular League Table, and to assess, apart from the Leader, who members felt had performed well in 2025. The list did include Jenrick because at the time of the survey it would have been odd, if prescient, to leave him out.
Having been top of that league table for much of the year, and busy with slick videos and Commons attacks on his opposite number David Lammy it is not really a surprise that Robert Jenrick came out top with 43 per cent. That he was already thinking of leaving for some of that time is the only surprising bit about it.
Jenrick passed judgement on his former colleague Mel Stride in a parting shot but members gave the shadow Chancellor second place on 18 percent and YouGov have released polling suggesting the Conservatives are a full seven points ahead of Reform and now the most trusted party on the economy. We’ll be hearing from Stride tomorrow on ConHome.
Cleverly, Philp, and Coutinho maintain the sort of positions, around 7 percent, they have had in our League Tables over last year but may see higher numbers now Jenrick will no longer be in the mix.
Our Survey results have been bandied about on social media by Reform supporters, and some commentators to suggest The Conservatives have ‘ditched’ (hardly fair in the circumstances) ‘their star player’. However, whilst there is no doubt some Conservatives who supported Jenrick may now follow his move or view the party even more critically it is quite clear from talking to them that not every one, at every level, who felt he was a star player is happy with what he has done, nor wish to follow him out.
So to our Backbencher of 2025, which poses a question.
The winner, voted for by the same people who made Badenoch Politician of the Year, and Jenrick Shadow Cabinet member of the year, is Suella Braverman MP with 25 per cent. Her nearest rivals were Iain Duncan Smith with 17 percent, Tom Tugendhat with just under 17 per cent and Jeremy Hunt with 11 per cent.
The question is obvious and hardly made by ConservativeHome alone. The answer is not.
There is, and has been, speculation for some time that Suella Braverman might consider the move to Reform. To most people in the business of such speculation she was more likely a prospect than Zahawi or Jenrick, but events have shown otherwise. Her husband has dialled up the social media volume in the battle I said would come once the Conservatives reached a cross over in polling trends with Labour, and Reform’s still large lead began to edge down.
Yet Suella Braverman herself has only made one public comment on the subject, in September 2025 when sat alongside Reform’s Richard Tice MP and unveiling her ECHR withdrawal plan. “I’m not defecting. I’ve been elected as a Conservative Member of Parliament.”
She repeated this two days ago in her Q&A with the Telegraph.
Now we know now that denial is clearly not the end of things. Jenrick told me, and many others, just days ago he definitely wasn’t defecting. But as Suella said, and as of this survey, and at this moment, she is still a Conservative MP and clearly our respondents felt that in 2025, she had made a notable impact as one.
The events of last week are going to ripple well into 2026, and ConHome will have more reaction to it starting tomorrow, but for 2025 this is how our survey members viewed the party as it was ‘before the shock.’