'No, we can't': the cry of a party a long way from power

In her speech to launch the Tories’ new policy programme, Kemi Badenoch struck a humble note.

- JOHN RENTOUL

“The public made it very clear that the Conservative Party needed some time away from government,” she said of the general election defeat. “Our job now is to use that time wisely – just as Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron did in the generations past.”

This is a good tone for the leader of a defeated party to adopt. The first rule of rebuilding after losing an election is to accept that the voters were right. In Badenoch’s case, such was the scale of the defeat that this inevitably sounds like accepting that the party is going to be out of power for at least two parliaments.

The implication of that is that the Tory party’s first task is not to try to win the next election but to fight off the challenge from Nigel Farage, who is trying to replace it as the main opposition.

Which may be why Badenoch chose to ditch net zero as her first big policy. Opposition to the cost of going green is – immigration aside – one of the main planks of Reform’s platform.

Badenoch made the announcement with some skill. The speech itself – and the awkward questions asked afterwards – will be drowned out by today’s headlines on welfare cuts and the Trump-Putin phone call. But she secured the front pages of the Daily Mail