If Conservatives really want to win again, then from top to bottom, you’re all going to have to do more

Tories, we need to talk.

I mean obviously I’m not the leader, in the shadow cabinet , or an MP, councillor, or even a party official so I understand that sounds a bit entitled, but I think we do.

This piece isn’t really for our Reform readers, or the odd lefty that creeps in every now and again, but entirely for the “thanks-all-the-same-but-we’ll-stay-on-to-fight-and-win” crowd of Conservatives.

It’s not for defectors or would be defectors, and the ones I know well enough, I’m not minded to slag off. They’ve gone, so they’ve gone, and if others go? Then they go. I’d rather they didn’t look too opportunistic by waiting to see which way the wind blows, and just went, but possibly the wind isn’t blowing quite the way everyone thought it would last year.

You know something has shifted when even the Guardian run an article asking if the Kemi bounce can continue? Loaded with all the innuendo it can’t but grudgingly accepting it is a thing. Even Guardian lefty’s lefty John Crace – a man so biased he seems to file his finished anti Badenoch review of PMQs, at 11.30am each  Wednesday – was forced to admit after last week’s encounter that Starmer so stinks at it, Kemi might survive.

You know it’s really shifted when every time the leader of the official opposition lands a serious blow on the government and grabs the media attention and the public ear, Reform, the prematurely self-styled ‘real opposition’ spend 48 hours of tactical online effort desperate to grab the limelight back. Furious keyboard warrior work all Tory aimed.

They are certainly tactical, I’m not sure they are strategic.

However, their target, kemi Badenoch, still sniffed at by some commentators, still not universally popular across the party, has palpably and demonstrably been making an impact, cutting through, and comfortably owning her job.

Labour press, a hard pressed bunch these days, posted a clip of the Prime Minister using his “same old Tories forgotten everything and learned nothing” shtick at the despatch box. It was the only vaguely useful clip they could find in a session which I described as a man mouse being toyed with by a happy cat. It shows the fragility of a man who is clearly not up to the job. Weak in weak out.

I spotted a supposedly Labour outrider yesterday suggesting that the only reason a “mediocre Badenoch was doing well, was Starmer was so bad”, whilst I’m not sure this ‘Cracean logic’ is quite the ‘mic-drop’ they might have hoped for, in order to do even better Conservatives should countenance and explore every single negative thrown at us, the better to learn how to counter it.

One area where the Tories are countering clearly and effectively is in their evidently renewed revived and irreverent digital and social media content, as highlighted by Tali Fraser this week.

Badenoch told me during the leadership campaign she wanted to make being a Conservative fun again. She insisted before Conference to me that she was having fun in the role despite a year of “where’ve you been” questions from the likes of the media, and frankly within the party.

Well her digi-team are clearly having fun.

It’s easier than the rather risk averse strictures of Government Comms, but it’s a million times better than a wooden Starmer trying to be ‘down with the kids’ on Tik-Tok. I actually still think Government should avoid Tik-Tok – just on grounds of the China links – but in his case it’s more: graceless greyscale does not make for good clicks. Plus he’s less bothered about the China thing.

Badenoch is now more popular than Nigel Farage according to new ‘leader polling’ that will probably boil poor Zia Yusuf’s peace this morning. Perhaps the consolation is that more accurately: Badenoch is less unpopular than Farage is. Even the pied-piper Polanski who ‘leads’ the poll, is still in the minus zone. We need to see thing as they are.

Politics is a tough gig.

Let’s face facts folks, PMQs and Budget responses will not win us an election. The party leader is seeing a personal poll bounce but less of a party poll bounce and even all that’s up from a slump. Now you can make all sorts of arguments about how that wasn’t Kemi’s fault, and how much was residual and visceral anger at the Conservative brand; at our ‘wets’, our plotters, Remainers. Our embarrassments, from the scandalous to the genuinely useless.

She’s still only been leader just over a year. However it is a fact that polling, for the party she leads, slumped to existential levels at one stage on her watch and has only slowly started to rise.

In the late summer of 2024 when I joined Conservative Home, I worried on these pages that “we might not be done burning yet” and we weren’t. Post Conference this year the vibe for Kemi both coming from her, and towards her changed quite dramatically, but the polls didn’t. The small and welcome rises were far less eye catching and here’s the warning point: nowhere near the percentage the party was on when it suffered that brutal election defeat.

Am I deliberately trying, Grinch like, to spoil what is for many Tories is a return of hope and expectation this Christmas?

No. Not at all.

I like proving to people who want to destroy us, and assert with such certainty that we are already dead that we are more than alive and can prove it. I cheer every time I see the Labour party front bench stray into the range of a Badenoch battering. The look on the Chancellors face is always priceless. Like she’s trying to avoid an Ed Miliband bacon sandwich embarrassment moment but simultaneously is sucking a lemon.

But team Tory, there are gaps. There are still weaknesess, that our opponents do and will exploit. You want evidence of that? See what they write underneath this.

There is a long way to go.

If the ‘tortoise and hare’, ‘marathon not a sprint’ narrative is to work  the Conservatives have a long way to go and a lot still to do. More than just the sensible, keep firing at the Government that’s your job, keep focussed on the economy as that’s the game, and don’t give publicity to those who seek your destruction.

This is going to have to be a team effort and the ‘Renewal Tory’ brand is all about the ‘new leader of a close team’. Now that team is actually closer, despite the ever present egos and ambitions in any party front bench (eh Wes?) and that’s important, to reflect, so the logic goes, the team versus the one man band.

But among that team and from MPs who’d liked to be in that team there’s still a feeling not everyone is firing on all cylinders. One shadow cabinet member put it:

“Ok so there’s a few who you think ‘what exactly do you fill your days with?’ It’s as if they think being in the shadow cabinet is about staying in the shadows. Getting cut through is hard enough in opposition but time serving low wattage performance isn’t going to cut it. I think given there are newer MPs really up for it, a clock needs to start ticking on the front bench career of any one in this party that isn’t giving it all they’ve got, particularly now. If you’re doing it for show or because you think you are owed it, it’s time to pop off”

Another surprised me by borrowing from Gordon Brown: “remember over David Miliband, he said it was ‘no time for a novice’ right? Well this is no time for ‘no shows’”

Admittedly a quite deliberate leadership focus on the economy, on immigration and the government’s weakest areas, does mean some briefs are crowded out. That it is even harder to get noticed. But some in the shadow cabinet should note, colleagues are watching and judging how hard they really try, however hard it might be.

Nobody should underestimate the obstacle the May 2026 elections could be. The numbers don’t look great, it’s 18 months since an electoral kicking and the leadership team, whilst buoyed by recent positive signals, know full well it’s still too soon to escape the drag anchor of that righteous post 14 year anger.

We need emphasis on that ever relevant campaign tool “change”. Frustratingly, it’s a strategy absolutely soiled by Starmer walking into his own double trap of offering change he had no intention to implement  or by trying to impose change he never mentioned before, then realising change works both ways, and can be for the worse. But the change message is vital for the Tories.

The Conservatives need to demonstrate, whatever howls of derision their opponents will hurl at them, that Badenoch’s renewal is under pinned by a party that to disenchanted right of centre voters can be seen as closer to ‘real Conservative’ values, and can explain on the doorstep what those are, and most importantly that that sounds and feels different from before.

As I’ve said before, opponents have stopped saying the Conservatives haven’t offered anything new, and now say what we’ve offered has been copied (one of the biggest myths they trot out) and more importantly Kemi won’t do any of it, or won’t be able to do any of it, in power.

A Conservative 2026 has to be an all-out effort on trust building. And it won’t be easy.

There’s a lot of work to do after Christmas and still, sorry to spoil the mood further, we could still fail.

Much as I look forward to more sharp Tory digital opposition and watching a confident leader do her job, if the Conservatives as a whole, at every level, just go through the motions or don’t give it everything next year then the bounce will be shallow and the project doomed.

Let our opponents claim we’re done, I think they’ve over played that, but if the Conservatives underplay their efforts to prove them wrong, they’ll be end up being right.

And I’d hate that.