'A Badenoch bounce' Tories hail more positive mood in party as leader finds her feet

At a Conservative donors event last week, Kemi Badenoch was asked for a selfie by the former Spice Girl Geri Horner.

- Pippa Crerar Peter Walker Kiran Stacey

The Tory leader was, her allies say, a little bemused by the approach. But they were clear about what it meant: cut-through.Badenoch's leadership got off to a poor start. Still reeling from the Tories' worst ever general election defeat, she took over a diminished and disheartened party, which was languishing in the polls and facing an existential threat from Nigel Farage's Reform UK.

For months, impatient Conservative insiders shared concerns over her political strategy, her inner team and the struggle to get a grip on the party's dire finances and broken machinery, as well as her visceral dislike of the media and combative demeanour.

By the time of her first party conference as leader in early October, many MPs feared the Tories were drifting into irrelevance and privately agreed the clock was ticking on Badenoch, with her first anniversary in the job the moment when, under party rules, she could first face a challenge.

But despite the Tory party's reputation for regicide, the challenge did not come. Instead, almost six weeks after that moment of potential peril, her own side finally appears to be warming to her. There are even signs the public is starting to give her a hearing. Though overall Tory poll ratings remain stubbornly low, a More in Common poll this week put Badenoch's approval rating at minus 14, which - although still significantly lower than when she became leader - has crept up in recent weeks so she is now nearly level with Farage and the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey.

What changed? For most Tory insiders, the turning point was Badenoch's confident performance at conference, including a policy-heavy speech designed to improve her standing with members. It had been billed - rightly - as a make-or-break moment.