MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Kemi needs more than Waitrose Woman - she needs Nigel Farage, too
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Tory leader Kemi Badenoch can congratulate herself on the first stage of a job well done. She has established herself as a major character on the national stage. Her face and voice are well-known. So is her obvious force of personality.
She has pushed aside the old image of the Conservative Party, the body which crashed and burned in the 2024 election. She took a lot of trouble, both by tax promises and by careful use of language, to appeal to her core base, and wisely so. She cannot win without it, though nowadays she needs to appeal beyond it to hope for a majority.
These are significant achievements. But they are nothing like enough, as she well knows. Andy Burnham could at almost any time decide to call a General Election, for which the Tories are not yet anything like ready. They need to remedy that, and Mrs Badenoch knows it.
Tory researchers and campaigners are hard at work, winning back lost supporters and seeking new ones. The Mail on Sunday reports today that Mrs Badenoch plans to woo 'Waitrose Woman' who shops at England's famously upmarket food store. And let us hope she succeeds.
But voting patterns in this country are shifting fast. A posh suburb no longer means a safe Tory seat – sometimes rather the reverse. Survey figures show that the old assumption that well-off Britons are Tories is totally outdated.
Recent polling of Waitrose customers by YouGov put Labour on 28 points, the Tories on 24 points and the Lib Dems on 21 points.
Affluence is now the preserve of the Left, while it is the less-cushioned who increasingly support the new movements of the Right.
We first saw this in the Red Wall seats won by the Tories in the Boris Johnson era. We can expect to see it again in the tougher parts of Britain, as discontent grows about crime, prisoner releases, the soaring cost of living, uncontrolled borders, especially the not-so-small boats, welfare misuse and NHS failure.
Leader of the opposition Kemi Badenoch gave her keynote speech to conference in Birmingham this week
Nigel Farage speaking to the media during his visit to Hyndburn in Lancashire on Thursday
These may concern Waitrose Woman, or even Waitrose Man. But they actively affect those who were once reliable Labour voters and now don't know where to turn.
We have many times urged Mrs Badenoch and Nigel Farage to form an alliance so that they can harness such voters for a new Right-wing, patriotic coalition.
Together, we have repeatedly said, the Tories and Reform can shatter the Left and prevent a frightening get-together by Labour, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats.
Maybe the next election is – or seems – too far away for Mrs Badenoch and Mr Farage to consider working together. Maybe the great wave of Tory defections to Reform is too recent for wounds to be healed.
But what if Labour see this division as their chance to go for a snap election in the next few months, with Kemi's revolution half-finished and Reform's great windfall of money still sitting in the bank?
The outcome of that could all too easily be a new Left-wing majority committed to changing the voting system to suit itself and quite possibly set on trying to re-enter the EU. This cannot be allowed to happen.
Together or in competition, the Tories and Reform must find a way of mobilising Britain's powerful new conservative constituency.
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