I’m not buying into the ‘Keminaissance’. If the Tories lowered the bar any further, they’d be Reform UK | Frances Ryan

Kemi Badenoch is considering doing her job. With her second Conservative party conference as leader looming on Sunday, and her rival Nigel Farage finally losing some ground, the provocateur with a reputation for dodging media rounds and being ill-prepared for briefs has seemingly cured her camera shyness.

In recent days, Badenoch has touted a policy to give the unemployed a “subsistence allowance” that would prevent them from buying booze or cigarettes, sought to bar benefits from young people who are straight out of school, accused Andy Burnham of wanting to take Britain “back to the 1970s” with public control of utilities, and enjoyed some mixed polling.

That the rightwing press has greeted this with a relief bordering on delusion (the Telegraph went as far to suggest the Conservatives could win a snap election) gives a hint of how dismally low the bar is in parts of the Tory camp.

More than two years since the Conservative’s crushing general election defeat, it is not simply that the most successful electoral force in the democratic world has collapsed into irrelevance – but that it has happened with barely a whimper. The juggernaut success of Reform UK, mixed with Badenoch’s unwillingness to fully engage, has given large sections of the media licence to treat Farage as unofficial leader of the opposition, with the Conservatives getting most column inches when another one of them defects to Reform.

The so-called natural party of government is essentially now an afterthought in the national conversation, throwing out an anti-migrant comment here and an ableist speech there in the hope of just getting some attention.

Meanwhile, the country quietly gets on with the day-to-day consequences of the last time it let the Tories govern: fundraising to patch up the roof at their children’s school, waiting a year to get a hospital scan, or walking past their now closed local library.

There has been an audible sigh of relief from Badenoch’s team as her personal poll ratings markedly improved over the past year, even as the Conservative’s image has tanked (as of last month, only 19% of Britons feel the party is ready for a return to government). But talk of a “Keminaissance” misses the point: it means little that the electorate are slightly less put off by the captain if they still wouldn’t get on the ship for fear of drowning.

That, as of last week, Badenoch – nostalgic for the days the Tories were a main player in a two-party system – is still ruling out an electoral pact with Reform is only further weakening her chances of ever seeing No 10.

It’s not as if the Conservatives have made any substantive efforts for reputation rehabilitation. Are they regretful of Brexit? What about Partygate? If re-elected, would they repeat Liz Truss’s deep tax cuts or George Osborne’s austerity? As the public faces mounting crises, from gutted living standards to long NHS waiting lists, Badenoch has largely kept stumm rather than offer any meaningful solutions. Indeed, on a rare occasion she has spoken out on a pressing issue – namely social care – it was to refuse to engage with Burnham’s reforms if paying for it involved tax rises.

You could argue that it would have made sense to regroup after such a large-scale loss – not least when Keir Starmer was expected to fulfil a five-year term – or that it is rather difficult to propose solutions for problems that your party has largely caused. There is truth in both. And yet it is telling what Badenoch chooses to spend her energy on. While the former minister has told her MPs not to expect big policy plans until 2027, she has found time to wade into culture wars including, but not limited to: why she hates critical race theory; a U-turn on the Conservative commitment to meet net zero by 2050; and why she wants the UK to withdraw from the European convention on human rights.

It’s not a coincidence that Badenoch’s main policy intervention ahead of gathering in Birmingham for conference is a universal credit cut that would shame unemployed people not trusted to spend cash to have to use a special debit card while saving a paltry £538m a year for the taxpayer (As context, the state pension bill is now £154bn annually.) It is less a substantive socioeconomic policy and more a wink to the audience, a casual cruelty that would make already hard lives even harder for the vague promise of a point in the polls. That Badenoch presumably genuinely believes in this stuff is a grim added bonus.

The Conservatives will clearly be hoping that Reform’s downward spiral continues and in the meantime, the benefits bill – much like immigration – seems easy pickings. The proposed universal credit cut is the latest in their package of welfare cuts worth £23bn. But that Reform recently announced a plan to slice a staggering £50bn from the social security budget shows that as extreme as Badenoch continues to go in the coming months, Reform will go further. That Farage is now being clipped by Rupert Lowe’s Restore shows neatly enough that no matter what depths you are willing to sink to, someone out there will dig their way lower still. Britain’s hard right in 2026 is effectively a Russian doll: each party pushes the previous one inside, only to reveal an even worse version underneath.

In another timeline, Badenoch would be pivoting to the centre, or at least the centre right, picking up traditional Conservative voters who fear Burnham’s threat of higher taxes and squirm at Reform’s race-baiting. But Badenoch is not the candidate for that fight. For all her inaction, she has been clear about her direction: centrist ideas are no longer wanted in the Conservative party, she has said, and if one-nation Tories have qualms about her rightward push, they “need to get out of the way”.

This is not the opposition era of David Cameron with huskies, or William Hague on a log flume wearing a baseball cap. Badenoch has no interest in ridding the Conservatives of their “nasty party” image. She is rejuvenating it. This is the party of the Windrush scandal, mass disability benefit cuts, and “go home” vans repackaged for an even more toxic climate. The only question is: will it actually work? It is hard to say what’s worse: selling your soul for power or selling it and still losing.