Kemi has cleared the decks but now she must turn the tide for Tories

LEADER AHEAD OF CONFERENCE

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Mrs Badenoch will not shy away from one of the biggest and most toxic challenges of our time when she arrives in the historic industrial powerhouse. What she may well be facing is D-Day.

The Conservative leader is hoping to use her party’s annual conference as the launchpad for one of the great political fightbacks.

Will it be the moment where she drags the Tories from the wreckage of two brutal elections and masterminds a major comeback? Or will she be torpedoed by another defection to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK?

Most people are expecting Mr Farage to detonate the D-bomb with names like Jacob Rees Mogg, Lord David Frost and Miriam Cates doing the Westminster gossip rounds.

The thousands of activists, lobbyists and journalists arriving in Manchester over the weekend will soon know the answer. It is Mrs Badenoch’s first conference as party leader and she needs to make a big impression.

Since she won the race to replace Rishi Sunak almost 12 months ago, the Conservatives have slumped further behind in the polls.

They are trailing Reform by around 15%, Labour by 4% and are even flirting with being overtaken by the Lib Dems for third place.

Major policies have been thin on the ground during an 11 months in which the Tory leader has been trumped on a number of occasions by Mr Farage.

It is no wonder there are rumblings of a coup. The conference slogan is “Stronger economy, stronger borders”, what the party leader regards as the two problems of our age — stagnant growth and global mass migration. Perhaps another slogan, in the minds of some members at least, is “stick or twist”.

Stick with Mrs Badenoch or do that very Tory thing and change to someone else. She is already their fourth leader this decade. But scratch beneath the surface and there is some cause for optimism for Tory supporters that the tide could be about to turn.