Published by The Telegraph (31st January, 2026)
IIt is, at the very least, a bold strategy by Kemi Badenoch. She leads a party that was shredded at the last general election due to infighting and incompetence in government. It is now supported by only one in five citizens, keeps seeing prominent figures defect to a rival group and faces existential challenge from a charismatic populist. But she is telling millions of potential voters, many of them natural conservatives, that she does not want their support.
There is no other way to interpret her bizarre “landmark speech” this week warning moderates and One Nation Tories to “get out of the way” as she heads ever further from the centre into the dark shadow of Nigel Farage. She denies those defecting to Reform have any policy differences and in her initial draft, wanted to boast of moving more to the Right “every day since I became leader”. But no, she will not apologise to all those “walking away” because they dislike her new direction. Kemi only wants her sort of “true” Conservatives.
This was her unyielding response to Andy Street, the twice-elected West Midlands former mayor, and Ruth Davidson, the popular former Scottish Tory leader, after they launched a new group attempting to bring “politically homeless” centre-Right people back into the fold. The pair argue there are seven million such voters to be won over, the sort of people driven away by the chaos of Brexit, tomfoolery of Boris Johnson and catastrophe of Liz Truss. But when asked about this new group, Badenoch mistook leadership for arrogance by insisting they must accept her resolutely hard-Right agenda.
Never mind that her agenda is clearly failing to resonate sufficiently with the public according to polls, nor that it is dictated largely by Farage and his idol Donald Trump. Let alone any idea that her party might seek to broaden its appeal as widely as possible to win power rather than reject slabs of the electorate that voted for it in the past. As Badenoch said, it is not 2016 any more – when the Conservatives had just won an election and, in January, had twice their current support in polls. Nor does she want to “recreate” 2006 – when her party was polling at 40 per cent under its centrist new leader David Cameron.
The tragedy of Badenoch’s reductive stance is her failure to seize the opportunity handed to her on a plate by the departure of her main internal rival along with key figures from the discredited Johnson and Truss eras, some of those ministers and aides responsible for the ineptitude and explosion in immigration that turbocharged Reform’s rise. And they have left at a time when a loathed Labour government seems to be disintegrating while the Liberal Democrats – who grabbed 57 seats from the Tories largely in traditional heartlands – have gone missing in action at Westminster.
It is easy to sneer on social media at soggy centrists who feel displaced by Brexit and brutal populism, all those cautious moderates of Middle Britain and unflashy pragmatists who seek social justice alongside a sound economy and strong borders. Badenoch laughably claims the party of austerity, Brexit, Truss and the hostile environment for migrants was too Left-wing in government.
Yet what is the point of her brand of Toryism if it simply pastiches Reform with shrill pledges to scrap climate targets, fight culture wars and deport 750,000 illegal immigrants using ICE-style hit squads while having so little of substance to say on the economy or foreign affairs, let alone on our appalling health, prison or social care systems?
Can Badenoch even define today’s Tories when so many business people were alienated by Brexit, graduates prefer Labour or the Greens, true blue suburbs are filled with liberals and the Red Wall has turned to Reform?
She plays into Farage’s hands by fighting on his hard-Right terrain instead of building an election-winning coalition, despite her party almost destroying itself in recent years by trying repeatedly to outflank this slick chancer. The Tories should confront past misdeeds and embrace the millions of moderate citizens as desperate for decent government as those frustrated voters seduced by populism. But they seem unable to face a basic truth: they cannot defeat their rival on the Right by echoing this enemy intent on their destruction while driving away voters in search of sensible alternatives.