Few people doubt that Kemi Badenoch faces what could be a make-or-break Conservative party conference this weekend. However, some members are not so worried about regicide so much as a more prosaic threat: sheer apathy.
“For every conference, as long as I can remember, I’ve gone for three or four days. This time it’s a day trip,” one senior party activist said. “Quite frankly, I’m thinking: ‘What’s the point in going for any longer?’ I know of lots of other people doing the same thing.”
This is not to say Badenoch will have an easy time in Manchester. Many of her MPs privately agree the clock is ticking on her tenure in the job. An X account reputedly set up by a disgruntled backbencher offers a daily countdown to the anniversary of her leadership victory after which, under party rules, she can face a challenge.
But there is something of a consensus that nothing is likely to happen yet, and probably not before next May’s local elections, mainly because very few people think it would make much of a difference.
“There are misgivings about where we are heading, but most people sense that our problems are structural,” one MP said. “The threshold for change is quite high. We’ve messed about with our leaders so much before and people hate it. For every voter I speak to who thinks we are too centrist, or who thinks we are mad Truss-ites, there are 10 who just see us as rats in a sack.”
This uneasy stalemate gives Badenoch a platform to present her agenda after a deliberately policy-light first year, even if few expect much beyond the widely expected announcement that a Tory government would pull the UK out of the European convention on human rights as a means to curb immigration.
Some are impatient for a wider sense of where Badenoch wants her party to go. “Labour are clearly doing very badly, and that leaves both an opportunity for Kemi but also a lot of pressure – she has to show she has a plan to capitalise from their weakness,” one MP said.
Another backbencher was more sanguine: “Expectations are currently so low that if she manages to walk on to stage putting one foot in front of the other and delivers at least a reasonable speech then that won’t be seen as too bad.”
Badenoch will in fact walk on to the main stage twice: first for a “welcome speech” to delegates on Sunday, and then for the more traditional leader’s address on Wednesday afternoon.
“I do wonder if they might have to shepherd some people into the hall to fill it up on Sunday,” one activist said. “I’m really not sure how many people will have arrived yet.”
This is perhaps Badenoch’s biggest challenge of all: making herself appear even slightly relevant. “I think it is fair to say we are not in a great place at the moment,” one backbencher said. “Our polling figure of about 17% or 18% is pretty stubborn at the moment. In contrast, there’s a real sense that Reform have got some momentum.”
This imbalance was on show at the just-ended Labour conference, where virtually every speech and dozens of fringe events highlighted the threat from Reform UK. In contrast, Keir Starmer’s address to the conference contained one brief mention of Badenoch’s party, beginning: “Now, the Tories – do you remember them?”
One veteran Conservative regional organiser described “entropy” in the party, with large numbers failing to renew their membership and once-busy local WhatsApp groups going quiet as others leave for Reform. “People seem to be thinking: ‘Why should I renew when I don’t know what the party stands for, or wants to accomplish?’”
The recent defection to Reform of Danny Kruger, a sitting Tory MP and one of the leading figures of the party’s culture-war right, had particularly hit morale, they added, saying: “Before, the defectors were mainly fruitcakes. But with Kruger that made people go: ‘Ah, we’re in trouble.’”
An MP added: “There is a lot of private worry and chatter about Kruger, and what Kemi can do about it. If you ask me there’s nothing she can do – I think her leadership is coming to an end, and Kruger’s defection was the beginning of the end.”
Most of Badenoch’s remaining troupe of MPs will be putting on a show of loyalty in Manchester. A former cabinet minister said: “It’s a bit like going to the in-laws at Christmas. You do it because you do it, not because it’s necessarily fun.”
Not all hope was lost, they argued: “There is a narrow path in which we carry on being sensible and diligent, Reform fall apart, and voters think: they’re the best alternative to Labour. It’s not the most optimistic of tactics but it’s also pretty much the only one we have right now.”
One shadow minister was less optimistic: “Mine was always a safe seat. But with the number of Reform councillors since May, most realistically I’ll spend the next two or three years deciding what I want to do with the rest of my life.”
Despite the career-existential stakes, they said, people should not expect too much in the way of drama in Manchester, adding: “Yes, I’m going there to be loyal. Can I say that about my colleagues? No, but then some of them are twats.”
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