On Monday, shortly after he had announced his resignation, Keir Starmer received a text message from Kemi Badenoch.'It was actually pretty gracious,' a Minister revealed to me. 'She basically said, "Don't beat yourself up. You've been let down and betrayed by the people around you".'Yesterday, at Prime Minister's Questions, the Tory leader decided it was time to deliver a beatdown to Starmer's colleagues.In a session that had veteran members of the parliamentary Press gallery letting out audible gasps, she tore into the Chancellor Rachel Reeves (who, at one point, again seemed on the brink of tears), Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson (who she branded 'a spiteful class warrior'), and the entire Labour backbenches (who she accused of plunging '400 knives' into the Prime Minister's back).In uproarious scenes, Speaker Lindsay Hoyle was forced to intervene, desperately calling for 'decorum'.Although parliamentary sources later claimed Hoyle had primarily taken umbrage at Badenoch's use of the phrase 'they don't like it up 'em', which she had borrowed from Lance Corporal Jones, from the BBC's Dad's Army.Yet those berating Badenoch for her supposedly 'unparliamentary' language are missing the point. She believes this is her moment. And in the words of one of her closest allies: 'Kemi doesn't care what anyone says. She's going to go for the kill.'For the first 18 months of her leadership, Badenoch has primarily been on the back foot. Burdened by the toxic legacy of the previous Tory government. Confronted by the mass ranks of over 400 Labour MPs. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch during Prime Minister's Questions, during which she launched an attack on several members of the Cabinet Technology Secretary Liz Kendall, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson and Labour Chair Anna Turley during PMQsAssailed from the Right by Nigel Farage and his insurgent Reform Party. According to a friend, 'she only had one job: Survive'.But now the Tory leader believes the tectonic plates of Westminster are shifting. And doing so decisively in her favour.The first major shift is obviously related to Starmer's resignation. For any Opposition leader, the claiming of a prime ministerial scalp represents a major rite of passage. And Badenoch believes it's one she has earned.While most observers have been pointing to the impact Reform's local election gains had on deciding Starmer's fate, Badenoch's team points to two different tide-changing moments.The first is when she set a strategic trap for Starmer by publicly offering Tory votes to help him face down a Labour rebellion over a bill to slash disability benefits. Starmer knew that relying on Tory votes would damage his credibility – and alienate his Left wing entirely.Meanwhile, Badenoch's offer stiffened the Left-wing rebels' resolve and boxed Sir Keir into a corner he couldn't escape from.'It was like when Cameron told Blair he'd back his education reforms, so he could be as radical as he liked,' one shadow minister told me. 'It basically locked him in a box he couldn't get out of.'The second decisive moment was Badenoch's decision to turn the spotlight on the Peter Mandelson scandal at a time when MPs from all sides were still unsure how to approach the issue. 'Kemi doesn't like focusing on granular Westminster issues,' one aide explained to me. 'She likes having a broader conversation with the country.'But she recognised something was very wrong here. And when she got Starmer to back Mandelson, then forced him to sack him a couple of days later, that was the beginning of the end for him.'Labour's unsteady transition to Andy Burnham has convinced Badenoch that now is the time to go on the offensive. The Tory leader recognises that the self-styled King of the North will almost certainly enjoy a bounce in the polls when he takes office. But she also believes she has already identified some fault lines between the incoming Prime Minister and his party.'When Kemi ran for leader, she had to spend a lot of time getting to know every one of her MPs,' an ally revealed. 'She got to know them, their husbands and wives, their children. Burnham hasn't done that, and when he becomes Prime Minister, he's never going to get the chance to do it.'He's going to be spending all his time running the country. And the distance, and resentment, will quickly start to build.'Another factor boosting Badenoch is that she has seen polling which shows that, under her leadership, more voters now see the Tories as united, rather than divided, for the first time in more than six years. According to a second shadow minister: 'People see us slowly but surely starting to pull together. Now set that alongside what the country's seen this week, with Labour MPs assassinating their own Prime Minister.'Which brings us on to another reason Badenoch sees now as the time to strike, and strike hard: what she sees as the accelerating implosion of Nigel Farage in the wake of his party's defeat in the Makerfield by-election. Yesterday Reform's leader conducted a series of media interviews, ostensibly to mark the tenth anniversary of the Brexit vote.But they were instead dominated by a series of car-crash exchanges over his acceptance of an undeclared £5 million donation from Thai-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne. The usually assured Farage became increasingly flustered under sustained questioning, petulantly blurting out that what he had spent the money on was 'nobody's business'.As one Badenoch strategist revealed: 'When we saw those interviews, we couldn't believe what we were watching. He's usually so adept at brushing this stuff off. But he was properly floundering. He had no proper answers. He looked so shifty, like someone who knows he's got something to hide.'This has fed into a broader perception that has been forming within Badenoch's team that Reform's attempts to take their insurgent campaign to the next level, and to the point where they are seriously able to challenge the Tories as an alternative party of government, have hit a brick wall.One of Badenoch's senior advisers pointed to the selection of Robert Kenyon as Reform's Makerfield candidate, a decision that was quickly undermined by the publication of a series of offensive and sexist social media messages – including a crass remark about former Countdown host Carol Vorderman.They contrasted this with their own vetting of Douglas Lumsden, who secured the Conservatives a vital and morale-boosting victory in Aberdeen South.'We did a proper job with Douglas, who was an exceptional candidate,' they said. 'He spent the campaign saying 'vote for me, because I want to open up drilling in the North Sea and reject Net Zero'. What was Kenyon's message? 'Vote for me, because I want to get intimate with Carol Vorderman'.'Badenoch's optimistic assessment will be scoffed at by those who point to her party's low poll ratings. But that would be a mistake. She has secured her first major prime ministerial scalp. Burnham has taken over stewardship of a deeply divided party. And, perhaps most importantly of all, she is correct in her view that the shine is coming off Farage.Reform's leader is still a significant political player. But watching his catastrophic media round on Tuesday, one thing became clear: the force field that has encircled him since the general election has finally collapsed. Questions and queries that he had previously dismissed with a joke or a shrug were finally starting to hit home. Farage is now politically mortal.And that presents Kemi Badenoch with a golden opportunity. The Tory leader is about to go on the offensive. As she demonstrated at PMQs yesterday, it will be a brave opponent who chooses to stand in her way.