UK's 200-Year-Old Conservative Party Confronts Existential Risk

Kemi Badenoch entered the Conservative Party conference last year competing with three of her Tory rivals for the leadership. As winner of that contest, this time around she confronts a more formidable foe: irrelevance.

Since losing two-thirds of its seats in last year's general election, dire poll ratings and defections have humbled the once-dominant party of UK government. If a vote were held today, a recent opinion survey showed, they'd collapse to fourth, trailing Nigel Farage's Reform UK Party, the governing Labour Party, and the Liberal Democrats.

Rebuilding after 2024's ballot-box rejection was always going to test Rishi Sunak's successor. But doubts over Badenoch's ability to lead the fightback mean she still has to guard against the mutinous instincts that led her party to cycle through five leaders in a decade.

Should pollsters' predictions hold at May's local elections - her next test at the ballot box - many in the shadow cabinet speculate she will be replaced soon after, according to those who spoke to Bloomberg, asking for anonymity to share their views freely.

If rivals lack a greater zeal to depose her ahead of that, it's because of skepticism that it would make any difference. Speaking before this year's conference in Manchester, which got under way on Sunday, several of Badenoch's colleagues voiced the concern that voters may be unlikely to return to them after just one term out of office.

The next election isn't due until 2029 and competing ever more successfully for former Conservative voters' attention is Reform, which has succeeded in monopolizing the right-wing of British politics far more adeptly than its five parliamentary seats would suggest. That number had been four before a defection from the Conservatives.

In recent weeks, Labour Party Prime Minister Keir Starmer has sought to cast the next election as a head-to-head between his party and Reform. If voters buy into his framing, the Tories will find it harder to turn around their dire opinion-poll ratings.

In interviews on the opening day of the conference, Badenoch - the first woman from an ethnic minority - to lead the party of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher - urged patience on her colleagues. "The election is not tomorrow," she told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg. "Nothing good comes quickly or fast. And it will pay off," she said, insisting she had a plan.

Her party came out with hard lines on migration, which has eclipsed the economy in recent polls of voter concerns. She pledged to annually deport 150,000 people "who shouldn't be here," while declining to elaborate where they will go.

Tomorrow in his speech, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Mel Stride will identify what he says are £47 billion ($63 billion) of potential budget cuts, with almost half of that made up from slashing the welfare bill. Another £7 billion would be hacked off the foreign aid budget - almost half of current spending in an area that's already suffered cuts to 0.5% of economic output from 0.7%.

The party's challenge will be convincing voters it can tackle problems that went unaddressed over a 14-year stretch in government. 

Labour Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the Tories had "suddenly discovered a zeal for reform that they did not have when they were in office," pointing to their failure to enforce secure borders: migrant crossings in small boats from France were virtually non existent in 2017, but had soared to more than 45,000 a year by 2022. Meanwhile, an effort to deport arrivals to Rwanda never got off the ground. It's an issue Labour, too, are struggling to deal with.

Several of Badenoch's colleagues - both in her cabinet and the back benches - said they fear more high-profile defections to Reform, which has already claimed Tory former cabinet ministers in Nadine Dorries and Jake Berry. In her interview Kemi denigrated the insurgent right-wing party as a "one-man band."

If Badenoch were challenged for the leadership of her party, erstwhile rival Robert Jenrick is a frontrunner but four of his colleagues voiced skepticism that he will do better against Farage. He'll be Farage-lite, one said: and voters who want that kind of politics will just vote for the Reform leader himself.

The other candidate on the up is Katie Lam, the 33-year old Goldman Sachs alumnus who is also on the right on immigration but - having won election in 2024 - has the advantage of not being associated with the old guard. 

Some party centrists believe there to be an opportunity for a leader who can tack against the Tories' current rightward shift and pivot back toward the center-ground to take advantage of Labour's own collapse. There are also Liberal Democrat voters to be won back there: Ed Davey's party took 60 seats off the Conservatives last year, and recent polls suggest they can win more next time around.  

"Polls are not elections," Badenoch said in her interview. Hers is not the only UK party nervously repeating this mantra.

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