Kemi Badenoch is leading the Conservatives into a new era, but it’s taking time. Although fourteen years of government has bedded in a new style of politics, she has work to do to make it electable again.
The long run ended badly. It ruined confidence for a return to power because of such a poor result. Badenoch needs to realign the party out of power. She has to give it new meaning and purpose.
Reform is fascist. We must stop Nigel Farage.
Nigel Farage in power would be appalling.
Such is the diary of Lord Heseltine, a Tory grandee and rogue in the Upper House. He sees Farage and Reform UK as something akin to 1939. And his position? Churchill, in character and attitude.
He lacks the action, though.
A once powerful figure in Conservative politics, governing rather than following while in Cabinet positions, he now reflects on the position of younger (and youthful) hopefuls in the same political system.
He sounds as sure as Winston, but lacks the accuracy.
He’s a nice enough man, and amicable in person to all who meet him from any political persuasion, but his analysis falls far short. He can’t honestly see this – as innocent, perhaps naïve as it is – in such terms as these?
The local elections tomorrow are a huge challenge for the Conservatives as they hope to steer clear of a total washout in support.
They don’t want to end up at the mercy of Farage if he gets a landslide for his slate of candidates, sees an opportunity for increasing a Westminster seat share, and hammers them later.
They don’t have a strong local support base at present, either, unlike Labour or Reform UK. Both have made efforts to keep a close appeal to issues that matter in Council areas across the UK.
It’s hard not to notice that anything touching on community concerns is right at the top of many people’s priority list.
Also, they only have a national appeal due to time they’ve spent in the Commons keeping the Opposition argument alive.
They struggle to stay afloat in a rowdy Parliament. Albeit Prime Minister’s Questions has gone well on balance, Labour are having a much easier time of it.
After the last embers of a wealthy partisanship in the House of Lords have died out, Kemi Badenoch MP (North West Essex/Conservatives) has come out swinging online for those that have now left its hallowed chamber, never to return, but with little reason to.
“So today, as an era closes, I want to put on record my profound gratitude and admiration for our hereditary peers. Britain has been better governed because of them. The Conservative Party has been stronger because of them. And Parliament will be poorer without them.”
Over centuries, these rarer folk have truly helped to define – along with their families – the way, the truth, and the life of the nation. It’s to be no more, now, but they’ll live, continuing their presence here, in a country that they helped to define, sustain, and probably fund.
The belief that energy should still be an expensive commodity for the average consumer in the UK is beginning to look like a fallacy. As more investment goes into green technology and it’s ever more evident that we’re not going to be reliant on oilfields for our source and supply in the near future, the only option is lower prices.
This is our way out of a binding infrastructure of high charges and abusive pricing that’s lasted many conflicts and wars and has not been resolved by much international effort.
The homegrown energy production that’s promised by new energy developments proves that pricing can be resolved in a much more local forum than before. It also shows that energy is not centralised or concentrated on particular countries but is now becoming a potential for any country.
The Conservatives are often at the forefront of arguing that a statement of affairs is not necessarily a firm fact of the matter. And yet, it struggles to come out with a firm guarantee that lower prices will become a reality for every consumer.
The UK now has a sort of energy production capacity that is sovereign and independent of other states. Because it’s green it’s also reliant on more local conditions and is less of a subject of controversy for people overseas. This is our only option to exit a punitive and cruel international market. It’s only problem is how far party’s are willing to invest in it.
Admittedly, Kemi Badenoch’s approach to politics isn’t thrilling, but it’s now beginning to appear to go places. The appeal of a quieter campaign to set out aspirations is likely gaining support from all of the right sources. Now, as the Prime Minister struggles to galvanise enough plaudits for his own agenda, Badenoch is finding herself capable of setting out her objectives in front of an attentive audience.
Her latest outing at the London Defence Conference is just such an example of a circumspect and almost clandestine manoeuvre to get heard in the centre ground. She wants to pull in the doubters, objectors, and even naysayers to distil a vision that might just get us over the finish line, putting the frustrations of a faltering new Labour era behind us.
The plan is built on being smart, and the latest innovations are free flowing points in her pitch for a return to military strength. She strains to offer an integration of all the newer things into a classical British mindset that works. It’s not to please America, satisfy Europe, or placate powers further off, but just make ends meet. Her deal is for all that it promises us it can be.
The fulfilment of this mission is a hard task even for a historic Conservative party that sees the UK has been pushed to the margins, principally by Labour, which seeks to just give anything away. The frustration over the Chagos Islands has followed nervous wrangling over the Falklands, Gibraltar, and even Northern Ireland – not to mention the Gaza Strip – in a litany of errors and rebukes. It’s left many people here in need of further clarity.
The chances of Badenoch imminently winning an election are better but not greater than before. She has to find a way to build back her party so that it could win her access to Number 10. If events last, it could be on the issue of defence itself. It’s a popular move. Many people are looking for a strong sense of security in a volatile world. Her sensitivity to this may find a way through and secure her time in office.
Liz Truss is a former Prime Minister establishing her own standing after a drubbing at the stumps. It didn’t impress many that she could communicate, hold a meeting, and drive conversations about ideas forward. This isn’t the whole point about her short tenure, but apart from claims that her government’s plan fell far short of the mark, if given enough time her bright intellect may have renewed a lot about the tired State that’s around us.
It’s certainly now her message to others, and her appearance at CPAC in Grapevine, Texas levelled this teaching of a new model of a prosecutor style of politics to get rid of the rubbish that other party’s put in across the pond. It’s certainly a rallying cry here, because Labour have now tried twice to marshal their powerful legacy as a rhetoric for changes here, there, and everywhere in a fix-everything approach for modern problems.
The end of Rishi Sunak’s Premiership is believed to have come about due to infighting in Conservative offices and in London over increasing levels of corruption in the party.
This is the conclusion of insider and international sources who have looked at the matter.
It was said to be seen months before the fateful July 2024 election, after which the historic party of the centre right saw its seat share drop to its lowest ever modern level.
The outward forms of corruption are said to be about personal finance, and specifically the promise of loans and other financial products.
An undercover investigation by a private China-based research group was offered personal help of up to £1 million to resolve personal debts.
The similarities between attempts by Conservative MP’s and their staff is said to have raised concerns beyond the betting scandal that erupted in some national press outlets.
In a stunning exclusive for Conservative News Site, a media manipulator alleged of sabotaging the public relations of the Conservative Party and also suppressing reports favourable to Conservative MP’s has now been spotted.
He’s been evading investigation for over ten years, but is believed to have still been active. He’s previously acted in London, using hundreds of contacts in national titles to ply his ugly, evil trade.
The Conservatives in the UK like to think their platform is sorted. The party has a professional appeal that garners support in itself. Yet it’s not got all its sticks together.
Their leader, Kemi Badenoch, does a good job at rallying the crowd to a cause, but I think that even in her best moments she doesn’t know what she’s really running for.
The party is a die hard pragmatist that has seen through many of its own worries, and even some of the UK’s own. Yet it’s time for something more from an organisation that claims a position here.
Their collective learnings amounts to more than some of their recent posturing, surely. It takes a packed manifesto to really make a punch work, and Badenoch needs to pull out all the ideas she’s got.
The truest test of character for a leader is a grip on reality. This is tried in politics by their recollection of what’s important by the questioning of those that believe it matters most to their very own lives.
At least, this is what Margaret Thatcher – the former Conservative Prime Minister and first female in the position – said about the duty as she spoke about her time in Number 10 to me over a brief lunch.
It’s not that I admired her at first, but I was able to put together what she said with what I had seen to gather that she was a real Conservative, a true libertarian at heart.
It didn’t just matter if some said it, she felt it was also necessary to reason it through, too, and this point, I considered, had helped her to deepen her understanding of all that she needed to know.
Her gift was for getting to know people well, or at least getting into their company to find them out and start it off.
She had principles – or rules – in mind that helped her to do it. “There is nothing to be gained by being familiar,” she said, “everything is lost in that way, always.” She retained a moderate approach to doing this always.
The practice helped build up a knowledge base of what it is people wanted. It stopped her assuming it and led her into the “realm of knowing,” as she put it. It’s how most of her assumptions were road tested before going to print.
The Conservatives are said to have had a strained relationship with most public bodies. In fact, Margaret Thatcher said she liked to see it as a “partnership” so that she could explore it further. If she could get into a boardroom, she’d get into their heads. This helped her to “understand their thinking, and to know them better,” she once concluded. It’s a belief that served her well.
In our time, we’ve got to keep going with what she started. All the public bodies that make up our lives are meant to be aligned with our purposes. It’s important that we keep them close, and never push them too far away. It minimises harm and increases the potential of true leadership. This is something we’re desperately in need of.
At this juncture, the two leading small-c conservative parties have set out their stalls.
The Conservatives have said they’ll back big business but for the benefit of consumers, meaning it’ll make it easier to transact but for better value. This seems to be its position.
The Reform side have come out recently for small business, saying they’ll back entrepreneurs that serve a more local customer base. This is in support of its large support base centred on affordable living.
The two parties then have a way to reach voters, and it’s an angle that makes sense on their side of the political divide.
George Orwell was born in India, but raised in England and schooled at Eton College as a young man. His writing career began in earnest in the 1920’s and 1930’s.
Orwell said, like many of his peers, he only found comfort in thinking about socialism. He said it made him feel better about life.
However, privately, he stuck avowedly to conservative principles by himself, even if he disagreed with its ideas in practice.
It’s alleged that the Heseltine that we’re told to know and love is not the Heseltine of reality. It’s the comment Lady Thatcher made to me in the years she spent in a political wilderness following her demise from UK political life.
She often spoke of people, and many names came up in our “coffee conversations”, as she called them. She knew about the hatred of public life, and the corruption ripped through every other walk of life. She knew she got labels she didn’t deserve, and many more besides that she didn’t like.
Her memories were apt, and faithfully reported the true drama of the times. Heseltine was someone she always found it unfortunate to remember. She said he was a bad example in private and in public. It’s believed he was a mastermind behind much of the conspiracy that straddled her Premiership. “He’s also disliked anywhere else I go,” she once said, soberly.
His recent comments about Nigel Farage MP (Clacton/Reform UK) are ill-advised. He clearly doesn’t understand the situation on the ground, as it were. He whips up hatred as if he is an Enoch Powell type of figure himself, which is more than likely. There are many secret extremists in Parliament who just plot against us. Farage is the latest target in his book.