Conservative conference mood upbeat but party still trails in polls, faces internal tensions

The forthcoming Conservative conference will be, almost everyone in the party agrees, notably more upbeat and unified than last year. There is a similar consensus that Kemi Badenoch is doing well as party leader. That is, however, not the whole story.

“The mood is better but the facts are still very poor,” one Conservative MP said. “We are still a distant third in the polls, and if there was an election tomorrow we would lose, and badly. That means the mood is overhyped.”

This is the inescapable shadow over the Tory gathering in Birmingham, which begins on Sunday. Almost two years since Badenoch was elected leader, her party is still polling lower than it did in 2024, when it suffered a catastrophically poor election result.

There is, of course, context behind her MPs’ patience, not least the fracturing of the political landscape and the rise of a new competitor on the right in Reform UK.

But while Badenoch’s future is secure for now, there is concern among some Tories that her dogged focus on winning back support from Nigel Farage’s party, with little on offer to more centrist voters, poses both political and reputational risks.

“We need to be attracting as many voters who left us for the Lib Dems as Reform, and I don’t personally think we have got the balance right,” a shadow minister said.

“There is an economic offering, but they don’t want us to be so intolerant on social issues. The way we are going, we risk being seen as the nasty party again.”

The phrase “nasty party” was coined by Theresa May in 2002, when the then party chair warned activists against focusing on too narrow a voter base and targeting other parts of society with punitive policies.

Even if Badenoch has learned to prioritise core policy and walk away from culture war arguments, it seems she has not fully absorbed May’s lessons about not punching down.

In recent weeks, the Tories have pledged to bar non-Britons from social housing, strip UK citizenship from dual nationals convicted of serious crimes, and cut some benefits payments to a “subsistence” level, with restrictions preventing the money being used to buy alcohol or tobacco.

The main pre-conference policy offering was in a similar vein: a pledge to slash overseas aid to pay for 50,000 new prison places.

There are plenty of Conservative MPs who don’t view this as a problem. “I’ve not heard any colleagues say they were worried about the nasty party stuff,” one said. “In contrast, a lot of constituents say they are very worried about welfare costs.”

One of the paradoxes of Badenoch’s tenure is the relative lack of open dissent, even on totemic ideas such as the commitment to leave the European convention on human rights (ECHR) to enact more rigorous deportation policies.

This is, in part, because many of her MPs respect the way Badenoch has taken time over decisions and sought to make her case, with the ECHR plan prefaced by a 185-page report by David Wolfson, the shadow attorney general.

But its is also a function of the apparent lack of appetite for a fight from centrist Conservatives such as the One Nation group, most of whom are either outside parliament, lying low on the backbenches or co-opted into the Badenoch project, as with Tom Tugendhat, made shadow foreign secretary in a recent mini-reshuffle.

“The thing about the One Nation group is that we never actually did anything,” one centrist MP said. “We got together and metaphorically held hands from time to time, but that was about it.

“Either way, everybody seems to be pulling together now. It’s not quite yet the Blues Brothers on a mission from God, but there’s a real sense of purpose. There are no factions, no five families. The arguments have stopped.”

This end of the arguments – at least for now – is in part down to Badenoch’s improved performance. While last year’s party conference was widely seen as make or break for a leader who had started shakily, she is now feted by Tory MPs for her performances in the Commons.

Her personal poll ratings are also on the rise, even if this is a relative achievement – Badenoch’s net favourability score with YouGov has gone up by 20 points, but remains at a lowly minus 15. Similarly, when voters are asked to describe her, common epithets include not just “strong” but also “mean” and “cold”.

Last year’s conference was also overshadowed by comments from Robert Jenrick, the then shadow justice secretary, who was accused of amplifying toxic nationalism after he complained about “not seeing another white face” in a part of Birmingham where the event was taking place.

There is no risk of this happening again, given Jenrick defected to Reform three months later, having been sacked by Badenoch for plotting against her.

”We are very unified, and a lot of that coincided with Jenrick going. We have outsourced our toxicity to Reform,” a shadow minister said. “But there is more to it than that. This time last year, Reform and Keir Starmer were both talking about us as being dead or irrelevant, and we’re not. Kemi has had a lot of cut-through.”

What public dissent does exist often comes from Prosper UK, a centrist grouping launched earlier this year by Andy Street, the ex-West Midlands mayor, and Ruth Davidson, who formerly led the Scottish Conservatives.

Among its vice-chairs is David Gauke, the May-era cabinet minister, who says Badenoch must pay more attention to “politically homeless” moderate Tories who helped the Liberal Democrats win dozens of seats in southern England in 2024.

“There’s a set of the electorate that don’t feel the party has spoken to them for at least 10 years, and Conservatives need to start doing that,” he said.

“There is no route to a Conservative majority that does not involve winning back seats in Oxfordshire and Surrey and other parts of the home counties.”

Badenoch’s calculation, according to Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London, seemed to be to try to stop Reform running riot, and then hoping Reform implodes and Andy Burnham’s government slumps.

“It is a risk, but what else have they got?” he said. “But I can’t see how it’s going to work for them and where the votes are going to come from.

“They seem to be overstating the extent to which voters think even Badenoch is a good thing. She’s still in negative territory. They have gone from a situation in which they got 24% of the vote in 2024 and they’re now, at best, on just over 20%. If this is what success looks like, I’d love to know what failure is.”