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All else being equal, the task of leading a party reduced to 121 MPs after a recent, and overdue, electoral reckoning could be considered relatively straightforward — relative, that is, to the task of leading the same party in the months prior to said rupture, when it boasted c.350 MPs, a panoply of unruly factions and a litany of conflicting theories about how to thwart the inevitable.
In the Conservative Party, of course, all else is never equal — and things are rarely straightforward.
Kemi Badenoch, the now Tory chief, won 22 of 118 votes cast in the first round of the Conservative leadership contest. Back in August, Tory MPs spread themselves exceedingly thin across the six candidate camps; Robert Jenrick, the first round’s victor, only beat Priti Patel, his worst-performing rival, by 14 votes.
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By the time of the fourth and final MP ballot, Badenoch had accrued the nominal backing of 42 MPs — just over one-third of the Tory parliamentary party. And the now-leader’s support is even less sturdy when one considers those James Cleverly followers who foolishly lent their votes to block Jenrick.
Finally, in the ballot of party members, Badenoch beat Jenrick by the narrowest margin in Conservative leadership contest history — stretching back 2001. Badenoch won 53,806 votes (56.6 per cent) to Jenrick’s 41,318 (43.5 per cent). Liz Truss and Sir Iain Duncan Smith both managed better showings versus their respective competitors (Rishi Sunak and Ken Clarke).
Badenoch’s shadow cabinet picks, in this way, reflect the precariousness of her positioning in the Conservative Party — and her relative lack of standing compared, even, to such failed Tory premiers as Truss and Duncan Smith.
The appointments of Mel Stride and Priti Patel as shadow chancellor and shadow foreign secretary suggest Badenoch is embracing the “unity” shtick that any right-minded, just-elected LOTO should. Patel and Stride are both popular figures in the parliamentary party, but are generally considered to hail from opposing ideological wings.
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Certainly, the moderate “herd” of the Conservative Party has been rewarded for rowing behind Badenoch in the race’s latter stages. Badenoch’s “one nation” backers like Jesse Norman and Andrew Bowie have been offered semi-senior posts (shadow commons leader and shadow Scottish secretary).
Graham Brady, the former chairman of the influential 1922 committee, once wrote that one nation MPs “felt no obligation whatsoever to defend the Truss government [because] it wasn’t theirs”. Badenoch, then, has cannily avoided following Truss’ lead in appointing a shadow cabinet of only the most zealous acolytes.
As such, Conservative moderates will presumably consider Badenoch’s shadow cabinet as they did Rishi Sunak’s cabinet: while the leader may not be an obvious “one nationer”, the individuals surrounding them are.
But one doesn’t have to examine Badenoch’s team too closely to spot areas where the new Tory leader is storing up trouble. Robert Jenrick’s appointment as shadow justice secretary, for instance, has raised eyebrows in Westminster given the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) falls very much within the purview of his brief. As Badenoch’s primary leadership rival, Jenrick relentlessly insisted that the UK should leave the convention — and that all MPs, parliamentary candidates and shadow cabinet ministers would need to sign up to that view under his leadership.
In time then, the convention could emerge as a point of policy confrontation within Badenoch’s shadow cabinet and, indeed, the Conservative Party at large. Given Jenrick ran his leadership campaign on a quasi-single issue basis, it follows that around 40 per cent of the membership and 30 per cent of MPs agree with him. Labour, suffice it to say, will relentlessly box the Conservatives’ ECHR bruise this parliament (see Keir Starmer’s comments on Monday).
At this stage, however, it is far easier for a new party leader to shield themselves from the political realities that will, one day, sensationally scupper any sense of unity — as Sunak discovered with the consecutive resignations of Suella Braverman and Jenrick in late 2023.
Starmer, moreover, will also seek to needle the new Tory frontbench over the public antagonisms evinced during the long leadership campaign. Late last month, Badenoch implied she would make a better leader than Jenrick as she had never been sacked due to a “whiff of impropriety”. It was a reference to her competitor’s involvement in a planning dispute when he was housing secretary in 2020 — a position he was later removed from by Boris Johnson.
Shadow leader of the commons Jesse Norman, it is also worth stressing, described his now-colleague Jenrick’s address to Tory conference as “lazy, mendacious, simplistic tripe”.
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More broadly, the basic problem with a “unity cabinet” is that they are never driven by any deeper rationale than appeasing antagonists and flattering factions. In lieu of a more compelling narrative, therefore, new Tory co-chair Nigel Huddleston today hailed Badenoch’s team as “embracing all the talents” of his party.
Of course, the shadow cabinet’s usual trajectory during a successful stint in opposition sees those MPs promoted on party-management grounds slowly shuffled out in favour of loyalists and ideological allies. Starmer’s first shadow cabinet as Labour leader contained continuity Corbynistas like Cat Smith, Andy McDonald and Rebecca Long-Bailey. But over time they lost their places to Labour right rising stars such as Peter Kyle, Bridget Phillipson and Darren Jones. The Labour leader, at every turn, embraced the ruthless symbolism.
To some extent, we also saw signs of this during Rishi Sunak’s tenure as PM as he promoted allies like Victoria Atkins, Laura Trott and Richard Holden at the expense of his party adversaries.
The problem for Badenoch is she does not possess the parliamentary support Starmer did in the 2019-2024 parliament; nor is the Conservative Party brimming with young, talented MPs that Badenoch can inexorably promote at moments of particular strength.
Badenoch told CCHQ staff yesterday that the Conservatives can bounce back into government in a single term. Starmer’s success would suggest there is precedent. But Labour was left with 206 MPs in 2019; the Conservatives today have 121.
It means Badenoch’s top team now will look rather a lot like the team she goes into the 2029 election alongside. That, more than anything, could potentially damn her.
Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on X/Twitter here.
Politics.co.uk is the UK’s leading digital-only political website. Subscribe to our daily newsletter for all the latest news and analysis.
