Why time matters for Tory MPs deciding Kemi Badenoch's future

Louis Armstrong had all of it in the world. The Beautiful South needed a little more.

For Kemi Badenoch, and her 118 MPs, time is also on their minds.

The Conservative leader believes she needs more time, to turn around her party from its historic drubbing in last year’s general election.

Yet as time’s gone on, she’s gone further down in the polls.

“I didn’t say it would be easy,” she told Tory members on Sunday. “And I didn’t say it would be quick.”

For her MPs – and I’ve contacted almost all of them for my BBC Radio 5 Live show via text and WhatsApp over the last few days – time is of the essence, and for some, it is already running out.

Around one in three Tory MPs responded to my questions about the mood of the party, and the pressure Badenoch is under.

They break down roughly into two camps.

In the first are those who think the next election is a considerable way off and want Badenoch to be given space to try to repair damage not all of her own making.

The mood, they insist, is better than much of the media speculation. “Chipper”, even.

They take comfort from Labour’s own woes and leadership speculation, and cling to a belief that Reform UK’s populist policies increasingly do not survive contact with reality.

“There’s a gallows humour about the party, a ‘well it can’t get any worse, can it?’ strange jovialness which is kind of bonding,” says one Tory MP.

Several texts I received suggested Badenoch had bought herself more time in office, perhaps months, with a single performance at Prime Minister’s Questions last monthwhen she challenged Keir Starmer over what he knew about the friendship between his US ambassador, Peter Mandelson, and convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

One former cabinet minister said: “The Mandelson PMQs was a turning point. She smashed it.

“That one half hour has probably bought her another six months of grace in the job. She doesn’t need to learn the same lesson twice. Giving her time and space is starting to pay dividends.”

And then there is the second camp who think the clock is ticking: on her leadership and on the long-term viability of what used to be called the world’s oldest and most successful political party.

They grumble, especially those elected for the first time last year, about a leader’s office lacking in direction, fight, even a willingness to acknowledge their existence.

“It’s not that we’re not getting listened to as a party,” says one 2024 Tory MP.

“It’s that we’ve nothing to say. We’re too timid, we think we’re in government still and are fretting about costing things that we’ll never have to worry about if we keep on launching commissions and our best pushback against Reform is ‘That’s not costed, you know’.”

In recent weeks, stung by criticism that she was aloof from her MPs, Badenoch has begun inviting in small groups for lunch. Well, platters of shop-bought sandwiches.

When I pointed out to one invitee that Badenoch famously declared last year that she hated sandwiches (in line with just 1% of the British public), they replied “oh no, the MPs had sandwiches, Kemi had something hot brought in”.

Some tell me privately that the looming date of 2 November, when Badenoch will have been in office for a year and therefore open to a confidence vote, is “focusing minds” in the leader’s office.

“She needs to have a very impactful conference in order to stave off a confidence vote before the end of the year in my view,” says one MP.

“There’s a whiff of fatality in the air because of the polls.”

So how much time does she have? Next year’s elections to the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Senedd and many English councils are shaping up to be “the moment of truth”, according to some of her MPs. (Labour MPs were saying similar things to me about Keir Starmer last week.)

One member of Badenoch’s own frontbench, who closely monitors the mood of the party, texts me bluntly: “She is under unbelievable pressure. This will be her last conference as leader.”

When I expressed some surprise at the prediction, the MP quickly responded: “I like Kemi and I think we should stick with the leader we have so I hope I’m completely wrong.”

Others are more convinced that her time is running out.

One Conservative who publicly backed Badenoch in last year’s leadership contest told me: “Kemi’s time as leader could end by Christmas rather than after the May elections.

“Ultimately unpredictable, and how conference goes will shape the outcome, but conference, and post conference polls, are undoubtedly pivotal.”

Whatever the merits of having someone different in charge – and many see Robert Jenrick waiting in the wings – it risks exposing the Tories once again to the most damaging of political forces: ridicule.

One grandee tells me: “We need to regain our senses and remember we were totally thrashed last summer and have not yet been forgiven. More shenanigans won’t help.”

A shadow minister agrees: “This conference is super important. People and members want direction and messaging and so this is Kemi’s moment. She can’t squander it – she needs to show why we are the sensible option on the right and a genuine force still.

“If she doesn’t deliver it could be curtains but most MPs I speak to want this to work. There is too much PTSD from the last five years.”

A former cabinet minister says: “The Tories will start to make progress – and it will be on the economy – after enough time has passed since our crushing defeat and the public feel enough water under the bridge since that defeat.”

Another says: “When the country is ready to listen to us again (a year hence maybe?), we’ll show that we are totally unified, have some great people and the right ideas.”

One MP who has been in the Commons for two decades says: “No one is expecting instant miracles nor is there urgent appetite for a coup.”

Some note that she is very much the new kid on the block: Farage has been an elected politician on and off for more than quarter of a century. Starmer has been leader for almost six years. Even Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, was a minister in the coalition government 15 years ago.

Being unknown means voters struggle to work out what she is about, but it also presents an opportunity to move beyond the last Tory government and appear new and fresh.

Talk continues about what to do about Reform. Will some sort of deal have to be made? A merger? A pact? A takeover? Whatever, the Tories need to be in a stronger position before it can think about such a negotiation.

There is also a theory that’s taken hold in Conservative thinking that part of their predicament is the fault of Keir Starmer.

“Usually the opposition would have longer but the government collapse in popularity has happened so quickly it has sharpened focus on needing to have an alternative narrative,” one Tory MP, first elected in 2024, said.

“It is hard to look like a renewed party though when so many of the key people are well known from the last government when it was comprehensively dumped from power.”

Some declare her party conference pledge to repeal the Climate Change Act a “gamechanger”. Others say the same of a promise to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.

What is not always clear is if they actually expect it to change the game, or merely hope it might.

Badenoch and her team are being urged to “quickly set out a bold, uncompromisingly honest, radical ‘Maggie 2.0’ program of reform, on tax, small business, immigration and welfare, to tackle the grievances Farage is feeding on”.

Ah yes, Maggie. Margaret Thatcher.

She would have turned 100 this month, but the former prime minister still haunts this conference and this party.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith, who took over as leader of the Conservatives after their 2001 election defeat before being ousted two years later, told me: “I think it’s a very difficult time for anyone to be leader.

“The Conservative party has a messiah complex, thinking some messiah will suddenly appear and lead us to the promised land.

“They look back to Margaret Thatcher and think she arrived as a fully-formed messiah to save the party and the country. In fact, when she arrived some people thought ‘this is a disaster’. People said she was shrill, weak, difficult. It took her time for her strength of character and intellect to dominate and for her to become the leader she was.

“Kemi has that capability and needs time too. Otherwise we risk confirming people’s view of us from our behaviour during the last government that we are fratricidal and not to be trusted.”

In the conference exhibition hall in Manchester there is a lot of Thatcher merchandise – and a glass display case holding the burgundy wool suit she wore on the day she left Downing Street – a monument to the moment a female Tory leader was ousted by her colleagues because they believed she was doing more harm than good.

After this conference week in Manchester we might have a clearer idea if Tory MPs are ready to do that particular Time Warp again.

Listen to Matt Chorley live from the Conservative party conference in Manchester, weekdays from 2pm on BBC Radio 5 Live.