2 weeks Ago By Aimee Meade
Sitting in a parliamentary office with Kemi Badenoch shortly before the close of the Tory vote last week, two things struck me. The first was that she was pretty sure she was going to win. That sense of dauntless confidence edged out a candidate (Robert Jenrick) who is in many ways closer to the party base than Badenoch in his views and language on immigration, definitely on leaving the ECHR and sundry other fixations of an ageing membership The second was that there is going to be an interesting dynamic between Badenoch’s register, which veers towards a fight – “That’s a journalist’s question,” she replied tersely when I asked if she really has a chance of being prime minister – and the diplomacy needed for the other side of her new day job.
That means melding many diverse opinions of the rump Conservative Party and having team-building skills at the heart of her mission to give the party a sense of soul and purpose it has lost. Badenoch has said the Conservatives need to understand where they have lost voters faith and why, before they can provide a checklist of easy answers or policy choices. What role she has in mind for her runner-up will tell us a good deal about how she will marshal a thin bench of Tory talent to deliver on her promised revival .
She cannot run a classic front bench operation – with only 121 MPs, the best of the bunch will need to be spread across policy briefs and that means choosing trusted voices who carry well against a wall of Labour sound in the Commons and beyond. Shocks permitting, she will appoint Andrew Griffith – an experienced former economics minister who has a practical business background as an erstwhile finance boss at Sky – as shadow Chancellor. That will parry Rachel Reeves’s expertise – he knows first hand how markets and companies work and how a Labour Budget will damage them.
The trickiest fit will be Jenrick , best known for his hardline pivot as immigration minister. But that would put him at odds on analysis and action with the new leader – and play to Reform’s bid for sore losers to come over to the Farage camp . A lot depends on how far Jenrick is prepared to accept the discipline of a new leader too.
He could take on a punchy brief like health, where the Opposition can get a hearing as public concerns mount and Labour inevitably struggles to fulfil expectations. It would mean moving Victoria Atkins, though, who is well regarded as a media performer, but supported Jenrick for leader. James Cleverly and Jeremy Hunt have already said they want to stay away from the front line, which leaves her with an A-Team of experienced talent skulking somewhere on the back benches.
If she neglects this group of more centrist Tories she will be accused of entering her own echo chamber of “anti woke” obsessions: failing to accommodate them could also look grudging. Read Next Now victorious Badenoch needs to figure out what to do with Jenrick Many Badenoch hobby horses – from the perma-war on civil servants, HR culture and whether Britain has ended up with too many mental health preoccupations – resonate with people who think that the state is often inefficient and its incentives poorly aligned to deliver good outcomes. But the Opposition is not an open-ended ideology seminar or a country-house dinner party where the conversation is about how mad things have become.
It requires a tough focus on what has gone wrong inside the party – and which issues she would like to spotlight against Labour to get the best return in a short period of time. Two years is generally the window that can make or break the role of a Tory leader in Opposition. One contradiction to watch is the blossoming friendship – after a freeze in relations – with Boris Johnson, who tweeted very generously about Badenoch’s “zing”.
She has returned this favour by saying the Partygate backlash had been “overdone”. That is quite some rapprochement, given that Johnson’s acolytes still bear noisy grudges against Badenoch for having a role in a “plot” to remove him. Healing that wound was obviously high on the newcomer’s to-do list, and also offers a route back out of the political wilderness for Johnson.
It is a reminder that the recent past is a place full of uneasy Conservative ghosts to be placated. The day job however is about figuring out how a pint-sized party can deploy a big personality to rescue its future – and the clock starts this week. Anne Mcelvoy is host of the Power Play podcast for POLITICO.
