A ‘Kemi bounce’ has geed the party up, but as it heads into the May elections it still lacks the policies to win voters over
T
he Conservative spring conference in Harrogate over the weekend illustrated two important truths about Kemi Badenoch’s leadership. The first is that she has indeed started to find her feet and operate at a much more effective tempo, as attested by the gradual rise in her personal favourability ratings since last September. The second is that this is not delivering nearly the boost to her party’s fortunes that it needs to.
Badenoch’s speech was perfectly serviceable; the government’s handling of defence is a big old bruise, and she is very happy to punch it. She has also partnered it with an actual policy intervention – reinstating the two-child welfare limit to fund an increase in defence spending – that adroitly targets another Labour vulnerability with rightwing voters.
Yet despite all that, the cut-through has been minimal. At the time of writing, several national papers seem not to have covered the speech at all, at least online. (As I have written before, one question mark over Badenoch’s leadership is not whether she can use the spotlight – she can – but whether she can attract the spotlight when events don’t point it at her, as they do in parliament and the autumn conference.)
