Is there any difference between the Tory party and Reform?

0:02Kemi Badenoch:This is a Global Player original podcast. The interesting thing with Kemi Badenoch is it's not that she's unpopular, particularly with voters, it's that they don't know who she is. So I ran a focus group on Thursday night in North East Hertfordshire. You know, this is traditionally a sort of true blue Tory seat. And this was with eight people, all of whom were previous Tory voters, had only abandoned the party in 2024. and I asked them, I said, do you know who the leader of the Conservative Party is to get into a discussion about how Kemi Baden-Ock was doing? I couldn't get into that discussion about Kemi Baden-Ock because only one of the group of eight knew who she was and that she was the leader of the party, which is pretty extraordinary.

0:45Kemi Badenoch:That is Luke Trill from the Pulse's More in Common on a focus group where virtually everyone in the room

0:52Joshua Rozenberg:hadn't even heard of Kemi Baden-Ock. Is it worse to be unpopular or is it worse to be unrecognised? As Kemi Badenok tries to lead her party into a new year of her leadership, has she worked out what the Conservative Party is for? Welcome to The News Agents.

1:16Kemi Badenoch:The News Agents. It's John. It's Emily. And that depleted band of brothers and sisters are heading towards Manchester for the Conservative Party conference, where they're trying to set out their distinct territory. And we've heard from Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor today, saying we're the party of fiscal responsibility. We're no longer going to pay more than we can afford. We've got to have a bit of rectitude in our spending and all the rest of it. The problem with that is, of course, the last Conservative government left Labour a fiscal black hole. We can argue over the size of it, but it was a substantial black hole where they had spent more than they could afford.

1:55Kemi Badenoch:They did promise things that there wasn't the budget for. And you've got a question. Well, OK, if that is who you are now, how much distance are you putting between yourselves and the last government brackets which you served in?

2:09Joshua Rozenberg:Yeah, I think there's one big question hanging over the next few days, which is how much those that are left, and by that I mean both Conservative MPs and the grassroots, the members, want to see the Conservatives reassert their own identity and how much they want them to become more like reform, looking like, sounding like reform. We've seen that change of mission over the weekend from Kemi Badenock, who's now said after a year of pondering, it is right that the Conservatives leave the ECHR. In fact, for those of you who are wondering, we're going to do an explainer a little bit later with Joshua Rosenberg on what the ECHR actually does and doesn't do, just to kind of try and get under the bonnet of that one a bit.

2:56Joshua Rozenberg:But I do think that it is a really interesting moment to see how the Conservatives are describing themselves, just as you say, and their relationship to the last four, five Conservative prime ministers that have been before. And Kimmy Bader not gave an interview to our podcaster colleague Anne McElvoy last week in which she described her own party as a distressed asset. and it's such an odd phrase. On the one hand, you're like, well done you for like, you know, the elephant in the room. Well done you for calling it out. Good old fashioned honesty. Just say it as it is, you know, in the same way that Theresa May once called them the nasty party.

3:37Joshua Rozenberg:But actually, I've just pulled up this definition of a distressed asset and it says it's an asset that's in financial trouble, often leading to a sale at a discounted price due to financial strain, default or potential foreclosure. In other words, it's the kind of phrase you use about something before you consign it to the dustbin. And so I think it is a really, really big moment to see how Kemi Baden-Ock and how those around her reposition this party where they can't fill the hall. They can't fill the timetable. There are speeches being made to empty chairs. they're trying to find out in real time who they are and who their supporters or putative supporters want them to be.

4:26Joshua Rozenberg:And I think that question is still unanswered.

4:29Kemi Badenoch:As you say, it's the asset you want to get rid of. The last thing you want to keep hold of is a distressed asset. And that's how she's described her own party. At my count, there are six living former Conservative prime ministers. a mark of how the party is doing is to ask this question how many of those people john major david cameron boris johnson theresa may liz truss rishi sunak will be at the conservative party conference this week in manchester do you know the answer to that well i bet you it's zero it's a round number it's a round number no one wants to go near the brand has become more toxic I think.

5:10Kemi Badenoch:Now, part of me admires the way Kemi Badenok is trying to take this. And, you know, the ECHR work has given them a day of headlines. Mel Stride has come out and talked about what he wants to do economically and accused reform of being way, way to the left in wanting to nationalise everything in its sight. And so they are staking out a bit of territory that may be different. But also they're trying to outflank reform as well by wanting to create a kind of their own version of ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Body, the people in America who are wearing the bandanas. They are rounding people up, rounding up immigrants and basically rounding up anyone who's brown, just taking them away and you don't quite know what's going to happen to them next.

5:52Kemi Badenoch:And I think that that is kind of, okay, that's worked very well. Also, I think the other thing that I thought was remarkable is sort of putting a number. We are going to get rid of 750 ,000 illegal immigrants in the first parliament. We're going to round up 150 ,000 per year. Hang on, how has it worked for the Tories so far to give numbers on migration? You know, David Cameron, tens of thousands net migration didn't happen. And every time you've set a number like that, it's led to failure and led to the emboldening of populist parties who say they're all bloody rubbish and reform will be kind of probably rubbing their hands at that.

6:30Joshua Rozenberg:I think it's even simpler than that, isn't it? Which is what is the space that they're inhabiting now. Using your example of America, the MAGA right or the MAGA body looks at the old-fashioned Republican and calls them Republicans in name only, RINO. And they tend to be the fiscal hawks. They tend to be the sort of anti-Russia, pro-Ukraine, pro-Israel. America big in the world. Yeah, exactly. America has a place on the world stage and a responsibility on the world stage. And MAGA hates the rhinos pretty much as much, maybe more than it hates the Democrats. So you're kind of asking, what is the conservative that sits between Labour and reform?

7:18Joshua Rozenberg:Is reform a party of the extreme right or is reform a party that joins the horseshoe of left and right in the same way that MAGA does? And if that is the answer, then what is the constituency that the Tories are going for?

7:35Kemi Badenoch:It's such an interesting question, because I think once you frame it in the US context, and of course, our politics is completely different. We've got a parliamentary system. This is a presidential system.

7:45Joshua Rozenberg:And a more fractured party system.

7:47Kemi Badenoch:And a more fractured party system. But what happened in America was that, let's use the financial parlance. We've had distressed assets. This was a reverse takeover. the Republican Party was taken over by the much smaller band that was MAGA and the Republican Party still has a name it still has the nameplate the Republican Party but it is the MAGA Party and an elephant yeah and an elephant the Republicans of old school of Mitt Romney of George W Bush the Atlanticists sort of thing Atlanticists outward looking fiscally conservative they're gone they have no power anymore And I feel we're halfway through that process in the Conservative Party where reform is gradually taking over the Conservative Party and the One Nation Conservatives feeling less and less at home.

8:37Kemi Badenoch:Who again aren't going. Who aren't going.

8:38Joshua Rozenberg:I sort of I think I must have made about 10 phone calls over the last 10 days of people who would have been central to former Conservative cabinets. None of them are there. I mean, it's an extraordinary thing. Just who will be represented? in that hall or on that stage over the next three days?

8:57Kemi Badenoch:So for every year that I've been going to Conservative Party conferences, which is a lot, it was the wets versus the dries in the Thatcher era. And the wets were the people who were One Nation Conservatives. The Ken Clarks. Yeah, the Ken Clarks of this world and, you know, others. There were all sorts who fulfilled that role. But the Conservative Party today looks increasingly a party of the right without the One Nation Conservatives acting as some kind of bulwark, whether it be on ECHR, whether it be on fiscal policies, whether it be on mass deportations, whatever it happens to be. And you feel that the process by which the reformisation of the Conservative Party isn't yet complete, but it's getting there.

9:46Joshua Rozenberg:Well, already cosily installed in Manchester is our favourite pollster, Luke Trill, from More in Common. And as I said at the beginning, one of the questions I think we're trying to ask is whether the Conservative members, the Conservative grassroots, the Conservative MPs want to align themselves more with reform. And if they don't, Luke, is there enough difference now between the two parties?

10:13Kemi Badenoch:It's a really good question. I mean, there's no doubt there is a significant group within both the Tory membership and the Tory parliamentary party who have kind of always wanted the Conservative Party to be more like reform. I mean, you sort of saw that during the Brexit years. They wanted a more kind of full, hot-blooded, right-wing approach. but the strength of the Tory coalition has always traditionally been that yes it has had those people who are more on the right but the sweep of the coalition has also gone through to people who are much more liberal in their outlook in places like the blue wall you know conservatives used to hold almost every seat in places like Oxfordshire for instance they've lost all of those since and so I actually think what you're seeing at the moment in the conservative party is a coalition that's actually quite split.

11:06Kemi Badenoch:And I think the slightly unusual decision by the leadership is the things that they have announced in the run up to this conference, whether it is repealing the Climate Change Act, or the decision to leave the European Court of Human Rights, are actually issues which split Tory voters down the middle. Obviously, ordinarily, in politics, you want to try and wedge your opponents, you don't want to try and wedge yourselves.

11:30Joshua Rozenberg:Do you think that they're making a classic mistake, which is actually a very similar one to the one that Labour seems to have made in the last six months, which is responding to the noise of reform. So you think that all the noise that's coming out of reform means that your own supporters want you to be more like that?

11:49Kemi Badenoch:I think that's absolutely right. I think that I think the analogy with mistakes the left made is very correct. And I think in particular, there is a danger that the Conservatives are making a similar mistake to what I think reform makes sometimes of thinking that X is Britain and thinking that the loud voices, people who post online, are representative of right-wing views in general. And I think the danger for the Conservatives is you've got there is this big chunk of what I would call institutional Conservatives. You know, they're right-wing on lots of issues, but fundamentally they believe in our institutions.

12:27Kemi Badenoch:You know, they don't want, we've talked about before, they don't want to burn everything down. They like a Conservative Party that's stable. And when we ask people, what does the Conservative Party look like at its best, the thing which comes top is delivers a strong, stable economy. And yet, we're hearing very little on the economy from the Conservatives. It seems instead to be chasing after those voters that they've lost to reform, or the most vocal of those voters that they have loss to reform. And the simple electoral logic is, if you're going to pitch yourself as reform light, those voters are just going to go for the full fat version anyway.

13:06Kemi Badenoch:So Luke, last week we spoke about the parlous position of Keir Starmer in terms of the British public. Where is Kemi Baden-Ock? The interesting thing with Kemi Baden-Ock is it's not that she's unpopular, particularly with voters, it's that they don't know who she is. So I ran a focus group on Thursday night in North East Hertfordshire. You know, this is traditionally a sort of true blue Tory seat. It shows how bad their loss was that they lost it at the last election because they'd previously held it, even in really quite difficult years. And this was with eight people, all of whom were previous Tory voters, had only abandoned the party in 2024.

13:45Kemi Badenoch:And I asked them, I said, do you know who the leader of the Conservative Party is, to get into a discussion about how Kemi Bejiannok was doing. I couldn't get into that discussion about Kemi Bejiannok because only one of the group of eight knew who she was and that she was the leader of the party, which is pretty extraordinary, right? I mean, I know, you know, we often talk about the fact most people are more politically disengaged than us and people in Westminster. But at this stage, former Tories not knowing who the leader is, I think really shows that cut through challenge. And that underlines your point about being on X, which is such an unrepresentative way of gauging public opinion.

14:24Kemi Badenoch:You'd have thought politicians would have learnt by now. I mean, Jeremy Corbyn thought we should have won the 2019 general election on the basis of how many likes his tweets would get. Completely. And it's interesting. I thought the challenge going into this party conference for the Conservatives was to answer the question, what is the point of the Conservatives in a world where you have Reform UK? And I don't think anything that they've done thus far has answered that challenge. You know, they've announced a reform-like version of a climate and environment policy. They've taken what was Reform UK's policy on leaving the European Court of Human Rights.

15:01Kemi Badenoch:What is distinctive about the Conservatives? And traditionally, that has always been the economy and it does look like there's some space there. But they seem more interested in the moment of trying to, it's almost like they're still treating the split with reform as a family feud rather than a political opponent that they have to define and mark themselves out as different against.

15:22Joshua Rozenberg:Do you think that's because Kemi Badenok is still actually arguing with her own front bench about the leadership? In other words, Jenrick has already declared that he would take the party out of the ECHR. Therefore, Kemi Badenok needs to close that gap with him. And one of the things I'm really interested in getting into, Luke, is your data on whether Tories across all the tribes that you describe are in favour of that as a policy.

15:51Kemi Badenoch:If you look at something like the European Court of Human Rights, you essentially split the Tory family down the middle. So the more right-leaning segments, you know, the ones who either want to burn it all down or the ones who prioritise immigration want to leave. But the other side of the coalition, the groups that we call established liberals, and actually, even the group we call the Rooted Patriots, who are a sort of red wall group, you know, they're concerned about immigration, but are really hesitant to embark on a return to Brexit wars or Brexit dominating the national conversation. those two groups oppose it so it's an issue which splits their own coalition and I think it's interesting that Kemi Baden-Ock has moved to this position because I think originally she was in the sceptical camp right she was she said she didn't think that it was going to be the silver bullet but I think it's a sign of the pressure she is under and the fact that ultimately she's being judged against Reform UK and the difference there and there's a whole swathe of voters on the other side of the coalition who ended up being neglected.

16:58Kemi Badenoch:And the danger is that some of those voters eventually go, well, you know, the Conservative Party's left me behind. Do you think that the Conservative Party, I kind of hate to use hyperbolic language, but this is almost becoming existential for them? I think if they can't answer the question of what do we stand for and what makes us different, it could well become existential. You know, I've spoken to some people here who said, well, You know, it's possible that, you know, Nigel Farage implodes and we're there to pick up the pieces. But when you're at that stage, when you're sort of waiting for this kind of act of God to help you as a political party, it's normally a sign of how difficult things have become.

17:37Kemi Badenoch:That said, electorates are very volatile. They change a lot. I do think, you know, it might not be a majority winning space, but I do think if the Conservatives can define a strong economic message, which is around fiscal responsibility, things are very difficult, we have to take tough decisions to balance the books. There's no one making that argument, particularly at the moment. And I think that could be the space for the Conservatives to at least stabilise themselves. But to do that, they've got to make that the front of their offer. And I think if they don't, they're not going to answer that what's the point in his question.

18:12Kemi Badenoch:And, you know, we know Starmer is already framing the next election as reform v Labour. I think Nigel Farage would very much like to frame it like that as well. They've got to get back into the conversation.

18:22Joshua Rozenberg:And Luke, on the question of net zero, which, as we've seen, you know, former Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho is now sort of coming out and saying no more net zero. And it's become deeply unfashionable as a cause for the Conservatives. If you are interested in climate change, if you do care about net zero, is there a world in which you go from being a Conservative voter to a Green voter under Zach Polanski? Or is that just a leap too far?

18:49Kemi Badenoch:Well, it's interesting. And there's no doubt that Polanski has had a good start as Green leader. I think he knows how to capture the attention economy. I think his speech about rip off Britain at the Green Conference actually chimes with the public mood very well. But interestingly, I think the sort of quid pro quo of his decision to pivot towards this eco-populism is it probably makes it harder for him to win over those kind of soft green voters in places like Waveney Valley or Herefordshire that the Greens won at the last election. And he's clearly pivoting them towards picking up, you know, former Labour votes in student towns and big cities.

19:32Kemi Badenoch:So I think under the current leadership, that is less likely to happen. And look, you know, climate change is an important issue for voters. It's not particularly salient at the moment. So I suspect there won't be many conservative voters who would flip maybe to the Lib Dems over that alone. But I think there's a wider piece there, which is if you are someone who believes in tackling climate change, believes in international institutions, what is the glue that is going to keep you in the Conservative Party at the moment? And it's not clear. It might come out over the rest of this conference. It's not clear what that glue is.

20:09Kemi Badenoch:And I think that is the real risk for them. Luke, great to talk to you. Thank you so much, as always. Thank you. Thank you. I'll see you tomorrow, Emily.

20:17Joshua Rozenberg:Bye.