There was a moment in the middle of this week when a news alert raised eyebrows among the politically committed. It read: \u201cKemi Badenoch: Former neo-Nazi candidate would just be sorting out bins.\u201d It was a collection of words that might prompt palpitations in the most sanguine of communications professionals, followed by panicked advice that retreat was necessary. But as a deeply weird week for the Conservative party came to a close on Friday, its leader appeared adamant she would hold the line.<\/p>\n
With Badenoch accused of aping Reform UK on policy and purging centrists from her party in recent weeks, her decision to stand by a man who was jailed after creating sexualised images of a Jewish MP and calling her a \u201crodent\u201d has prompted concerns about the leader of the opposition\u2019s political antennae and the Tories\u2019 wider strategy.<\/p>\n
On Monday it emerged that Joshua Bonehill-Paine, a former neo-Nazi activist convicted of the sexist and antisemitic harassment of the Labour peer Luciana Berger, had been selected as a Conservative candidate<\/a> for a local election in Somerset.<\/p>\n A little over 48 hours later, Bonehill-Paine \u2013 creator of pro-right viral AI clips<\/a> that often depict politicians on the left in an ugly light \u2013 withdrew his candidacy, saying Badenoch had instead asked him to become an adviser<\/a> to the party\u2019s culture and integration commission, focusing on how young men become radicalised.<\/p>\n As pressure mounted, Badenoch said she was \u201csad\u201d that Bonehill-Paine felt he \u201cwon\u2019t be given the space to explain his position and represent his community\u201d, chastising those who had called her judgment into question.<\/p>\n \u201cPiling on [people who have changed] and trying to get them cancelled may be sport for other parties,\u201d she wrote on social media. \u201cBut this is a different Conservative party.\u201d<\/p>\n Her stance has left some in her party delighted by her persistent pugilism but others scratching their heads and looking to the door. For opponents, it has been a moment to savour, with Reform saying her support \u201cbeggars belief\u201d, while locally focused Liberal Democrats delighted in criticising Badenoch\u2019s insistence that as a councillor Bonehill-Paine would only have been \u201clooking at parking, sorting out bins\u201d.<\/p>\n Badenoch asked Joshua Bonehill-Paine to become an adviser to the party\u2019s culture and integration commission. Photograph: Channel 4 News\/YouTube<\/p>\n The embrace of Bonehill-Paine has come at a critical moment in Badenoch\u2019s leadership. Last month she embarked on a purge of the Conservative parliamentary party, writing in the Telegraph<\/a> that it was \u201cnot a retirement home for failed politicians\u201d and warning that anyone who supported net zero targets or Britain\u2019s membership of the European convention on human rights (ECHR) would be blocked from standing as a candidate in the next election.<\/p>\n The former minister Gavin Barwell lost the whip<\/a>, and another former cabinet member, Grant Shapps, was blocked<\/a> from standing again for the party. Sources said multiple Reform members had been blocked from joining the party. \u201cTo do that while welcoming this chap has definitely raised a few eyebrows,\u201d one source said.<\/p>\n The purge had left many young Tories and centrists politically homeless, said the former Tory activist Cody Butler, who resigned last weekend as chair of the One Nation Conservative Network and left the party. He said centrists, members worried about the climate crisis and conservation, and remainers \u2013 those who Margaret Thatcher may have referred to as \u201cWets\u201d<\/a> \u2013 were \u201crunning out of road\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe keep hearing the parliamentary party has never been more united,\u201d Butler said. \u201cBut I think the real truth is the arsonists have taken control, and they\u2019re trying to set the great oak tree of Toryism alight.\u201d<\/p>\n Badenoch also announced this week that a Conservative government would evict foreign nationals with leave to remain from social housing<\/a>, prompting Reform\u2019s Zia Yusuf to accuse her of trying to copy his party\u2019s policy, and the homelessness charity Shelter to warn the policy would \u201cdrive up homelessness and put extreme pressure on councils\u201d.<\/p>\n Despite the private worries of some in the Tory party, delight in Badenoch\u2019s unabashed tack rightwards is not difficult to find among the rank and file. \u201cIt\u2019s going down really well,\u201d said one MP. \u201cThe party thinks Kemi is doing brilliantly.\u201d<\/p>\n A senior Conservative adviser said the party was being clear on what it believed and why. \u201cAt the last election, voters would tell us they didn\u2019t know what the party stood for. Kemi is changing that,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n Kemi Badenoch meeting police officers in Surrey on Tuesday. Photograph: Jordan Pettitt\/PA<\/p>\n But rightwingers are not the only ones enjoying the ride. Labour sources said they had been looking on and reaching for the popcorn this week. \u201cJust as you think Kemi might finally be sorting out their tent, she spends a week focused on totally irrelevant nonsense,\u201d said one. \u201cNothing trumps a person\u2019s instincts and hers are just wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n In the yellow corner, gleeful Lib Dems point out that under Badenoch the Tories seem to be showing little interest in taking back any of the 60 seats they lost directly to their party in 2024 as part of a drubbing in which the Conservatives<\/a> shed a record 251 seats.<\/p>\n Once the near unchallenged flagbearer of middle England, the Conservatives now have zero MPs in Oxfordshire, for the first time since 1777. A committed leftwing hiker could walk from Land\u2019s End to London without passing through a Tory constituency. Despite Badenoch\u2019s insistence that the May local elections showed \u201cthe Conservatives are coming back\u201d<\/a>, the party lost about 500 councillors in England<\/a> and ceded control of three local authorities. Even now, the Tories are skittering along at 19% of the vote<\/a>, compared with Reform on 24 and Labour on 23, according to Politico\u2019s poll of polls.<\/p>\n A senior Lib Dem source said: \u201cIt was widely expected that the Conservatives were at their lowest ebb in 2024 and would quickly start making progress. In fact, it\u2019s us that have taken loads off them rather than the other way round.<\/p>\n \u201cWhether it is [on] fighting for more action on the climate or defending human rights, the Conservatives sound more like Nigel Farage than former leaders who were popular with middle England. It is genuinely giving us the biggest opportunity against them we have ever had.\u201d<\/p>\n Given current polling \u2013 and the results of the 2024 election in which the Conservatives lost about a third of their votes to Reform \u2013 attempting to woo those who voted for Farage was logical, said the pollster John Curtice. \u201cThe Tories are in a pretty dire state but not quite as dire as they were a few months ago,\u201d he said. \u201cBy my calculation, they are now losing around 17% of those votes to Farage.\u201d<\/p>\n Polling indicates Badenoch\u2019s personal approval rating is on the up: a YouGov poll last month put her net favourability at -11, the highest of any Conservative leader in more than five years.<\/p>\n Curtice said the Tories were facing a dilemma: whether to try to build a more centrist coalition with the voters who had stuck with the party, or try to win back Reform voters. \u201cBut in [Reform] voters\u2019 minds they are the party who failed to deliver Brexit properly and who created the Boris wave,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd the more fundamental problem is not to do with ideology, it\u2019s to do with competence. Partygate trashed their ethical reputation, and [Liz] Truss trashed their reputation on the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n Robert Hayward, a Conservative peer and polling analyst, played down the theory that Badenoch was increasingly moving the Conservatives to the right but said she would have to adapt against a Labour party under Andy Burnham.<\/p>\n Asked where it currently looked as if the Conservatives would gain seats on their current trajectory, Hayward was candid. \u201cI don\u2019t think that is very clear as yet, and that\u2019s a major challenge to the party,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it\u2019s a problem for everyone. People\u2019s allegiance to any political party is weaker now than at any moment during my lifetime. Who knows where we\u2019ll be in December 2026, never mind on the eve of a general election.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was a moment in the middle of this week when a news alert raised eyebrows among the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":731202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-731201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/731202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}