Kemi Badenoch is a breath of fresh air

For the moment, the task at hand is to hold this Labour Government to account

Kemi Badenoch’s victory in the Conservative leadership contest is a landmark moment for Britain. The Conservatives now have a leader willing to step outside the boundaries of the technocratic Left-wing consensus and view the challenges facing this country with a fresh eye.
Ms Badenoch will need to use these skills to their fullest as she sets about her greatest challenge yet. Having won over the party membership with her forthright, no-nonsense approach and her emphasis on principles, she must now apply this same energy to persuading the wider public that she is the right choice to lead this  country.
As she begins this work, Ms Badenoch can take heart from recent polling which has shown the Conservative party with its first lead over Labour in three years. Sir Keir Starmer’s parliamentary majority may be considerable, but it is built on sand, and his personal popularity is already deep underwater. The next election is clearly there for the taking.
If it is to be won, however, the Conservatives will need to rally around their new leader. All factions of the party must accept that the leadership contest is over, that the membership has spoken, and that there is no more room for the blue on blue attacks and petty infighting that came to define the final years of the last Conservative government.
Ms Badenoch, meanwhile, must make the most of those talents available to her. Robert Jenrick, who finished second in the contest, ran a remarkable campaign as an outsider. His work on developing policy proposals for controlling immigration, in particular, struck a chord with a chunk of the electorate, and it would surely be in the best interest of the party to put his skills to full use.
The machinery of party selection and campaigning must also be fixed. Too often, the support offered to candidates is wanting, and the calibre of those candidates themselves in doubt. The last election was a low-ebb that must not be repeated.
Alongside rebuilding her party, Ms Badenoch must set about winning back former Conservatives who felt let down by the party after 14 years in office. While this will be challenging, it is less so than it might first appear. The Conservative party’s meritocratic nature makes it a natural home for the aspirational classes, as demonstrated by the fact that Ms Badenoch – raised in Nigeria – is the latest in a series of leaders to shatter various ‘glass ceilings’. What it now needs are the correct policies and execution.
Despite the myth that has taken hold on parts of the Right, it is not impossible to both eat Reform’s lunch and appeal to those who voted for the Liberal Democrats or Labour.
Polling shows, however, that these groups – and indeed those who didn’t vote at all – are more similar than they are different. Each lists reducing immigration as a top priority, and a majority back a strong agenda on combating crime, cutting taxation and fixing public services.
There is a coherent offering in that combination that can appeal to those who voted Conservative, and those who did not: securing our borders, cracking down on rampant criminality, supporting the private sector growth that makes it possible to fund our public services, reforming the broken elements of the state that swallow taxpayer funds with little sign of improvement.
It would be foolish to pretend that developing or implementing such a plan will be easy. In its last period in office, the Conservative party was defeated as much by the structures of the state as by its own internal divisions. It is to Ms Badenoch’s credit that she has demonstrated repeatedly her understanding of the obstructive nature of the modern civil service, human rights industry and quangocracy. This understanding must become the basis for implementing a genuinely conservative policy agenda.
Here, Ms Badenoch can take inspiration from history. In 1974, Margaret Thatcher faced a similar crisis: a Labour government hostile to private enterprise, attempting to spend its way out of trouble, and a conservative movement in dire need of a guiding philosophy and a plan to change the country for the better. The party today needs its version of the “Stepping Stones” report; an agenda for addressing the social and economic ailments afflicting Britain, giving the party its intellectual footing as it develops its manifesto.
For the moment, however, the task at hand is to hold this Labour Government to account. Sir Keir’s newfound unpopularity is richly deserved; his early days in office have been marked by a blatant “class war” approach that singles out traditional enemies of his party such as farmers and private schools for punishment, and lavishes rewards upon striking unions and the public sector. Ms Badenoch must stand against this, acting as a voice for conservative Britain and for the private sector, emphasising the virtues of growth over redistribution, and offering a vision of the good that appeals to the country as a whole in contrast to Labour’s ‘divide and rule’ politics.
If she can succeed in this – appealing to middle class couples in leafy suburbs and young people who feel as if they will never be able to own their own home, to pensioners who fear for their financial security and to taxpayers who see an ever larger share of their incomes fuelling a failing public sector – then the rewards will be immense.