More bad news after a year of dire polling for Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, as a pollster finds even her own members don’t think she should be in the job.
Once a titan of British politics and the nation’s default party of government, a much reduced party meets this week for its annual conference at Manchester. The event has not been especially newsworthy so far, with images of near-abandoned conference halls even for the speeches of prominent party members more likely to grab headlines than policy pronouncements so far.
Nevertheless, pollster YouGov has spoken to a sample of party members — relevant at least because if there was a party leadership challenge, it would be they who could vote on it — and found that even less than a year after Kemi Badenoch was elected at leader, there is already appetite inside the Tories for change at the top.
Per the pollster, this instinct to move against Badenoch doesn’t seem to be inspired by any particular dislike of Badenoch personally. The majority say they feel favourably about her in the party at large, among her own 2024 leadership race supporters, and among the supporters of her then-rival, Robert Jenrick.
Nevertheless, a staggering 50 per cent of Tories say they don’t think Kemi Badenoch is the right person to lead the party into the next election — whenever that may be — with 46 per cent saying she should. The very close polling in this regard also illustrates, once again, the longstanding and still unhealed rift in the party which has contributed to its unending woes.
There’s no outright favourite amid Tories for who should replace Badenoch but, inevitably, Robert Jenrick does lead the pack with a plurality at 37 per cent.
These results follow by just days major UK-wide polling that finds the Conservatives are predicted to fall to a humiliating fourth place in the House of Commons in the next election. If this came to pass, it would be the first time the Tory party wasn’t in the top two in hundreds of years of British political history. The poll predicted the possibility of a large Reform UK majority in the house, meaning a Nigel Farage-led government.
As caustically observed by YouGov in their press release, these tales of woe are a long way from the confidence felt amid Conservatives this time last year, even after their historic election defeat, that things were business as usual and they would be back in government soon. Apparently 56 per cent of Conservatives believed their leader would be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
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