Kemi Badenoch’s skewering of Keir Starmer at Wednesday’s PMQs was a highlight in what has been a relatively good couple of weeks for the Tory leader.
If the Conservatives don’t exactly have a spring in their step, they are at least enjoying a sigh of relief. Their conference produced some policy ideas worth talking about and Badenoch delivered a punchy and humorous speech that stilled the endless chatter about her leadership, at least for a time.
Of course, most people have better things to do than pay attention to party conferences. But in this case, the task was to shore up her position and consolidate the Tories’ diminished base.
My latest polling suggests she succeeded in this crucial (if limited and short-term) objective. The number of Conservatives who would rather see her than Starmer or Nigel Farage as PM has risen sharply, pushing her rating up among voters as a whole.
The bad news is that this has yet to inject any life into her party’s standing overall. Insiders now say she is in a race against time to make that happen before the local elections next May.
In my survey, voters tended to think yet another change at the top would show the Tories had learned nothing about why they lost. But when panic sets in, politics takes on a logic and momentum of its own.
That’s not to say Badenoch is entirely at the mercy of events.
One thing that holds the party back is that the numbers saying it has changed since its defeat has flatlined all year.
New ideas can help here, and the proposal to scrap stamp duty – designed to show the Conservatives are back on the solid ground of growing the economy and helping people get on in life – has made some voters prick up their ears.
However, the public spending cuts that would make the policy work cause some to worry about a return to Tory austerity. While many agree the Government spends and wastes too much, they also wonder if cuts will be too harsh or hit the wrong things.
Putting affordable energy ahead of unrealistic Net Zero targets chimes with a growing public mood, as does making it easier to deport foreign criminals, though some are nervous that leaving the European Convention on Human Rights could undermine protections that they take for granted.
Though there have been steps in the right direction, most feel the party has yet to stake out distinctive territory of its own, other than as what one of my focus group participants described as a ‘sterile’ version of Reform UK.
Keir Starmer has an equally big problem holding together the (not very big) coalition of voters who put him in Downing Street. With Labour down to third place in some polls, I found only a quarter of voters expecting him still to be in his job this time next year, let alone after the next election.
Starmer’s solution is to try to bind together the increasingly disparate forces of the Left. Hence his intense focus on Nigel Farage as a threat to what progressives regard as civilised values.
Hence also the decision to recognise a Palestinian state before Hamas had released the hostages, the hints that Labour will further boost welfare entitlements by lifting the two-child benefit cap and the Chancellor’s newfound line that Britain’s economic woes are all down to Brexit (and, by implication, the people who brought it about).
Framing the next election as a choice between dull but benevolent Starmer and the spectre of Farage at the No 10 door might work, just as the prospect of a Labour-SNP ‘coalition of chaos’ helped galvanise the Tory vote a decade ago. And given the PM’s record in government, it’s probably all he’s got.
The trouble is, it’s hard to speak to only one chunk of voters at a time. Labour’s plan to tighten the rules on migrants’ indefinite leave to remain in the UK were intended to neutralise moderate voters’ concerns about immigration.
But I found that many who like the idea in principle don’t think Starmer means it: like his party’s conference flag-waving, they see it as performative and reactive.
At the same time, some Left-leaning Labour voters, dismayed that he seems to be playing Reform’s game, are all the more inclined to flirt with the Greens – who have already started to make strides under their outspoken new leader, Zack Polanski. The Corbyn-Sultana Party and its rolling comedy of errors may also be helping consolidate unhappy Leftists into the Green camp.
The PM is tripping himself up in other ways. His mandatory digital ID scheme is the perfect Starmerite policy, managing to be expensive, intrusive and pointless all at the same time.
I found huge majorities thinking the plan would be an invasion of privacy and open to hacking and abuse, with only a small minority thinking it would help deter illegal migration.
And then there’s the economy. Much as they want to give their government the benefit of the doubt, even Labour voters are getting fed up with hearing that it’s all the Tories’ fault.
People are resigned to Rachel Reeves helping herself to yet more of their money in next month’s Budget, but that doesn’t make them any less cross about paying more and more with nothing to show for it.
Meanwhile, six in ten voters say Labour and the Conservatives are part of the same failed political system and completely new ideas are needed. No wonder they think Farage is the most likely next PM.
Lord Ashcroft is a businessman, philanthropist, author and pollster. His research is at LordAshcroftPolls.com. X/Facebook @LordAshcroft
