TODAY, the Conservative Party is in Manchester for Kemi Badenoch’s first conference as party leader.
Whether or not she will get a second one is an open question, and both MPs and party members will be paying close attention to how she and the party perform over the next few days.
It is easy for journalists to overestimate the importance of party conferences.
For those who attend, they are a four-day political hot house.
Journalists are packed together with politicians with nothing to do but chase the gossip and over-analyse the speeches.
Most voters out there getting on with their lives don’t pay nearly so close attention.
That said, this conference really is critical for Badenoch, for one simple reason: this is just about the only week of the year when the Conservatives are guaranteed a turn in the media spotlight.
It can be very hard for a party that has been in government for a long time, to adjust to the harsh reality that the Opposition is not automatically the story.
Setting the terms on immigration debate
When you are a minister, the media comes to you, and even your trivial announcements at least carry the weight of being HM Government policy.
An announcement by a Shadow Minister, on the other hand, is at best a statement of intent.
That problem is compounded for the Tories by the historically dire circumstances the party now finds itself in.
Labour has a big enough majority that its backbenchers can furnish their own opposition — one which actually has the power to defeat the Government’s agenda.
Worse still, for the first time in modern history the Conservatives have a viable challenger to their right.
Reform UK may have only five MPs — including recent Tory defector Danny Kruger — but Nigel Farage is one of this country’s most talented political campaigners.
He’s setting the terms of the debate on immigration just as he did on Europe.
As a result, the Tories are in a far weaker position than they were in 1998.
However bleak things may have looked at the time, William Hague at least had the comfort of leading 165 MPs (versus Badenoch’s 119), a strong performance in that year’s local elections (today’s Tories lost two-thirds of the seats they were defending in May), and being Britain’s only national right-wing party.
So the pressure is really on — and for nobody more so than Badenoch herself.
Pressure is really on
One of the big question marks over her leadership bid was the fact that she had never shown any enthusiasm for the media; her profile in government was skilfully built with a relatively small number of well-chosen interventions, and she maintained a low profile through much of last year’s contest.
That approach translates very badly in opposition and, combined with her decision to embark on a comprehensive (and slow) policy review, has too often left the Tories with little to say over the past year.
It has led not only to very little precious media coverage but also party activists having no good answer to the obvious question: “Why should I vote Conservative?”
Badenoch has clearly recognised the danger (not least because the media vacuum was being adroitly filled by her leadership rival Robert Jenrick).
The timetable for the policy review has been accelerated and we have this week seen two big announcements: The Conservative government would leave the European Convention on Human Rights and it would create a new force, modelled on America’s Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), to help deport illegal immigrants.
There are surely many devils waiting in the detail of both proposals, but they are a good start, and will presumably be followed by more (hopefully on taxation and the economy) over the next few days.
The polls tell their own bleak story
But will it be enough to quiet speculation about the future of Badenoch’s leadership? Probably not.
The polls tell their own bleak story.
The awkward fact is that, far from steadying the ship, they have been going in the wrong direction since the conclusion of the leadership contest in November.
That is by no means all Badenoch’s fault.
As mentioned above, the leadership contest attracted a lot of Press attention, and that probably helped to keep the Tories in a more prominent place in the public’s imagination than their new circumstances really warranted.
But since November, the Conservatives have not only been overtaken by Reform in the polls, but also suffered a huge loss of their remaining councillor base in May.
Some counties in the party’s former heartlands now have more Tory MPs than councillors, which is very bad news for those MPs as the councillors tend to be the people delivering their leaflets.
The conference is Badenoch’s last, best chance to prove her critics wrong.
She may not hunger for the spotlight as many politicians do — but Badenoch has to show that when she has got it, she can use it.
HOW seriously should we take the Conservatives’ new seven-point plan to “secure Britain’s borders”?
Voters will surely like the sound of many of the proposals, such as a commitment to deport small boat arrivals within a week.
But we have heard big promises on immigration too many times to take them at face value.
Remember David Cameron’s repeated pledges to cut it to the “tens of thousands”?
Kemi Badenoch’s commitment to withdrawing from the ECHR is one reason to give the plan a second look.
It won’t be enough to guarantee the plan will work, but our continued membership makes any tough border control regime functionally impossible.
The big question is on deportations.
It takes two to tango, and it doesn’t matter what the British policy is if we can’t persuade another country to take back an illegal migrant.
And that’s assuming we can even prove the migrant is one of their citizens.
Why do you think so many of them throw their passports into the Channel?
Politicians can only guarantee deportations if they have somewhere guaranteed to send the deportees.
Looks like a reheated Rwanda scheme might be back on the menu.
