When Badenoch won the leadership of the Conservative Party, her defeated opponent Jenrick used his Shadow Cabinet role to pursue something of a ‘here’s what you could have won’ strategy. His stunts were noisy and occasionally ridiculous, but they arguably reflected an understanding that the Conservative Party no longer had an automatic right to exist, let alone to command the public’s attention.
As I watched Jenrick gain headlines with his leader nowhere to be seen, a recurring question niggled at me. Was it better to be seen to try and to fall short, or to retreat from the conversation while rebuilding the party in the expectation that there would still be an audience when you returned? I felt that Jenrick pursued the former and Badenoch the latter, confident that she could launch at a later date, once everything was in order.
It bothered me as the months passed. Policy commissions and first principles reviews are all well and good, but Badenoch appeared to be approaching renewal as if the media environment were the same as when Cameron undertook the process in 2005.
Social media has broadened the number of people participating in political debate, including an increasingly influential group of commentators operating in the ‘posting to policy’ pipeline. MPs are themselves part of that ecosystem, with their own audiences and incentives to demonstrate activity. It makes it difficult for a party leader to withdraw from the conversation while retaining a stake in it.
Meanwhile, processology in political reporting is rewarded on social media: the behind the scenes, the personality, the in-joke for Twitter. If The Thick of It’s away day happened today, staffers would live-text the yes-and-ho session to a member of the lobby. An entire ecosystem of podcasts and personalities dissects the manoeuvres of politics as enthusiastically as its substance. How could a strategy of absence stand up to Farage’s media-first approach, surely vacuum-abhorring nature would fill the gap?
Badenoch's withdrawal also played into Starmer’s strategy of denying the Conservatives the oxygen of political relevance by talking across them to Reform as the key opposition. It worked. For the first year of her leadership, really until last year's conference, Badenoch was spoken about as a placeholder, when she was spoken about at all.
I have always believed in approaching a problem from first principles, and Badenoch's efforts to rebuild the party are clearly necessary. But I just don't know if the timing was advisable. Note the tense. It was a difficult trade-off, and one that carried the risk of leaving the Conservatives politically irrelevant by the time they were ready to reintroduce themselves.
At the time, my judgement would have pushed me to say go larger and louder, hold Reform's feet to the fire and demonstrate a clearer understanding of people's priorities than Starmer. This seemed to be Jenrick’s approach, with a view to keeping the Conservatives in the conversation without giving Reform the space to establish itself as the principal opposition. Few wanted to hear from the Tories in 2024, but that's not to say the party should have ceded its place in the conversation quite as much as it did.
Badenoch has been lucky. Jenrick’s personal ambition ran ahead of strategy. From the point of view of political leadership, Starmer wasted two years of Labour’s new victory on low scandal and incompetence. He perfectly illustrated the perils of trying to deliver without the vision, strategy or principle Badenoch was working to establish: an entirely hollow programme cannot survive contact with friction.
I wonder, though, if the Conservatives are still paying the price for Badenoch's early absence. Her own polling numbers have become increasingly buoyant while those of her party remain stubbornly subterranean. Two years on from one of the worst defeats in its history, even the low twenties earn cheers.
Yesterday's speech will have gone some way towards addressing that. More in Common polling suggests that the public has not yet made up its mind on Badenoch, and there are signs that people are prepared to listen.
“A wizard is never late,” says Gandalf. “Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.”
Badenoch means to tell us that she has arrived now, armed with The Right Way and ready for the fight. Perhaps this was always the plan, and perhaps she will look back on the last two years as proof that her instincts were right. Politics is an inexact science, and we should respect luck like any other asset.
But I wonder what might have happened had events been less accommodating. There will be other occasions when Badenoch must decide whether to withdraw or to fight, and she will have to trust those same instincts again.
