There was a moment in the middle of this week when a news alert raised eyebrows among the politically committed. It read: “Kemi Badenoch: Former neo-Nazi candidate would just be sorting out bins.” 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.
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 “rodent” has prompted concerns about the leader of the opposition’s political antennae and the Tories’ wider strategy.
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 for a local election in Somerset.
A little over ۴۸ hours later, Bonehill-Paine – creator of pro-right viral AI clips that often depict politicians on the left in a ugly light – withdrew his candidacy, saying Badenoch had instead asked him to become an adviser to the party’s culture and integration commission, focusing on how young men become radicalised.
As pressure mounted, Badenoch said she was “sad” that Bonehill-Paine felt he “won’t be given the space to explain his position and represent his community”, chastising those who had called her judgment into question.
“Piling on [people who have changed] and trying to get them cancelled may be sport for other parties,” she wrote on social media. “But this is a different Conservative party.”
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 “beggars belief”, while locally focused Liberal Democrats delighted in criticising Badenoch’s insistence that as a councillor Bonehill-Paine would only have been “looking at parking, sorting out bins”.
The embrace of Bonehill-Paine has come at a critical moment in Badenoch’s leadership. Last month she embarked on a purge of the Conservative parliamentary party, writing in the Telegraph that it was “not a retirement home for failed politicians” and warning that anyone who supported net zero targets or Britain’s membership of the European convention on human rights (ECHR) would be blocked from standing as a candidate in the next election.
The former minister Gavin Barwell lost the whip, and another former cabinet member in Grant Shapps was blocked from standing again for the party. Sources said multiple Reform members had been blocked from joining the party. “To do that while welcoming this chap has definitely raised a few eyebrows,” one source said.
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 – those who Margaret Thatcher may have referred to as “Wets” – were “running out of road”.
“We keep hearing the parliamentary party has never been more united,” Butler said. “But I think the real truth is the arsonists have taken control, and they’re trying to set the great oak tree of Toryism alight.”
Badenoch also announced this week that a Conservative government would evict foreign nationals with leave to remain from social housing, prompting Reform’s Zia Yusuf to accuse her of trying to copy his party’s policy, and the homelessness charity Shelter to warn the policy would “drive up homelessness and put extreme pressure on councils”.
Despite the private worries of some in the Tory party, delight in Badenoch’s unabashed tack rightwards is not difficult to find among the rank and file. “It’s going down really well,” said one MP. “The party thinks Kemi is doing brilliantly.”
A senior Conservative adviser said the party was being clear on what it believed and why. “At the last election, voters would tell us they didn’t know what the party stood for. Kemi is changing that,” they said.
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. “Just as you think Kemi might finally be sorting out their tent, she spends a week focused on totally irrelevant nonsense,” said one. “Nothing trumps a person’s instincts and hers are just wrong.”
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 ۶۰ seats they lost directly to their party in ۲۰۲۴ as part of a drubbing in which the Conservatives shed a record ۲۵۱ seats.
Once the near unchallenged flagbearer of middle England, the Conservatives now have zero MPs in Oxfordshire, for the first time since ۱۷۷۷. A committed leftwing hiker could walk from Land’s End to London without passing through a Tory constituency. Despite Badenoch’s insistence that the May local elections showed “the Conservatives are coming back”, the party lost about ۵۰۰ councillors in England and ceded control of three local authorities. Even now, the Tories are skittering along at ۱۹% of the vote, compared with Reform on ۲۴ and Labour on ۲۳, according to Politico’s poll of polls.
A senior Lib Dem source said: “It was widely expected that the Conservatives were at their lowest ebb in ۲۰۲۴ and would quickly start making progress. In fact, it’s us that have taken loads off them rather than the other way round.
“Whether 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.”
Given current polling – and the results of the ۲۰۲۴ election in which the Conservatives lost about a third of their votes to Reform – attempting to woo those who voted for Farage was logical, said the pollster John Curtice. “The Tories are in a pretty dire state but not quite as dire as they were a few months ago,” he said. “By my calculation, they are now losing around ۱۷% of those votes to Farage.”
Polling indicates that Badenoch’s personal approval rating are on the up: a YouGov poll last month put her net favourability at -۱۱, the highest of any Conservative leader in more than five years.
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. “But in [Reform] voters’ minds they are the party who failed to deliver Brexit properly and who created the Boris wave,” he said. “And the more fundamental problem is not to do with ideology, it’s to do with competence. Partygate trashed their ethical reputation, and [Liz] Truss trashed their reputation on the economy.”
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.
Asked where it currently looked as if the Conservatives would gain seats on their current trajectory, Hayward was candid. “I don’t think that is very clear as yet, and that’s a major challenge to the party,” he said.
“But it’s a problem for everyone. People’s allegiance to any political party is weaker now than at any moment during my lifetime. Who knows where we’ll be in December ۲۰۲۶, never mind on the eve of a general election.”
