7 hours ago
8
The sign behind the podium read “The Rt Hon Kemi Badenoch MP, leader of HM opposition.” It felt like a reminder. Not just to the handful of Conservative loyalists who had bothered to turn up for the speech at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in London. But to Kemi herself.
Badenoch and her party are on the verge of an existential breakdown. Every week they seem to slide further and further into irrelevance. The question is no longer whether the Tories can present themselves as a credible government in waiting in four years time; it’s whether they will have become extinct by then. And whatever happens, Kemi will almost certainly not still be around as leader.
But Kemi isn’t going quietly. This was to be her second keynote speech in a week. The only trouble is that no one is really listening. Seven days ago she was in Scotland to announce her party’s intention to resume drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea. Only she might as well not have bothered. None of the news channels thought it worth their while to broadcast what she had to say. She didn’t even rate a footnote in the lunch time bulletins. Because what the Tories have to say no longer matters. Why waste time on something that is never going to happen?
It’s not just the media that can sense the imminent immolation. It’s the other parties too. At the Reform party conference, Nigel Farage barely mentioned the threat from the Tories. Because there isn’t one. He just contented himself with one passing swipe at Robert Jenrick. Hell, why not? In his acceptance speech, the new leader of the Greens, Zack Polanski, took aim at both Reform and Labour. Not a word for the Conservatives. And last week’s Labour reshuffle was all about a shift to the right to take on Reform.
Even Tory MPs seem to sense their own extinction. More often than not in the Commons, there are only a handful – usually the same faces – on the opposition benches. And it’s not as if they have anything better to do. It’s a bit too soon to be hunting down alternative careers outside parliament. You can only assume that they are all spending a lot of time in intensive therapy. Why am I here? What am I doing? If a tree falls in a forest when no one is around, does it make a sound?
For this week’s cry for help, Kemi had chosen to talk about the welfare bill. The good news is that this time round there were TV cameras to carry live coverage. So there would be proof it had actually happened. The bad news is that the humiliation now reached a wider audience. The sense that you were intruding on a very private grief. You could almost touch the despair. Deep down, even Kemi knows she is running out of road. She just can’t admit it. Not yet, at any rate.
But reality is beginning to kick in. Even for a woman who has always believed herself invincible. Right about everything. Born to succeed. She has tried everything and yet nothing is working. Normally her speeches come across as a direct challenge to her audience. I dare you to prove me wrong. Now there is more of an air of resignation. A hope against hope that her message might land. On Tuesday there was a flatness to her. As if she had had the fight knocked out of her. An attempt to smooth talk listeners into her way of thinking. Just without the necessary charm.
Kemi is often her own worst enemy. But this time, it’s not really her fault. It’s the Tories that have run out of road, every bit as much as her. Even the most gifted, most charismatic leader would struggle to get a hearing. And Kemi most definitely is not that person. So all she can do is go through the motions. Rage against her inner futility. The dying of the light. Doing something. Anything. Because it’s better than the alternative of doing nothing.
“No one understands how to live within your means better than accountants,” she began. And that was the point at which she began to lose the room. The idea that the Tories had a unique grasp of the public finances was laughable. And yet that was what Kemi was saying.
It was like this. Everything had been just fine for the 14 years the Conservatives had been in power. The economy had been a well-oiled machine. And if it hadn’t felt that way then it was our fault for talking down the country. Rishi Sunak had been on the verge of an economic miracle. Unleashing growth at a level previously unseen. But voters had made the huge mistake of returning a Labour government. And it was Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves who were entirely to blame for the country’s decline.
But here was the offer. If Labour were to reduce the welfare bill – more attentive listeners might remember that when Liz Truss had tried to do this, she was removed from No 10 by her own MPs – then Kemi would throw the might of the Tory party behind the government. As a public service. Except she wouldn’t. It was an empty gesture. Just how short did she imagine people’s memories to be? Only a few months ago, the Tories voted down Labour’s bill to cut public spending by £5bn. She can’t even get the optics of performance politics right.
There was just time for a few questions from a largely friendly media. And even they were largely sceptical of her offer. Two questions for the Telegraph and none for the Guardian. Clearly Kemi not willing to venture an opinion on the Boris Files just yet. “Only the Tories can save the country,” she said. At which point people began to drift away. Time for Kemi’s medication.
