Kemi Badenoch has a vision of the country she wants to create: the leader of the Conservative Party dreams of a Britain in which people rejoice at the prospect of passing on their millions to successive generations; where subsidised childcare is extended to those earning over £100,000 while there are drastic cuts in benefits to the many less well-off.
Her ideal may not appeal to the majority of the country, but she calculates that it will sound like the promised land to those who fear a socialist attack on their assets. Given that fewer than 5 per cent of estates pay inheritance tax, the levy’s power to influence voters seems disproportionate, but the remaining Tory core appear to love Kemi-land.
Badenoch’s hope is that her blatant appeal to the wealthier section of society will win back defectors in formerly Tory seats, whose disillusion with their hapless, hopeless succession of leaders led them to vote for the KCO party – Keep the Conservatives Out.
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Polling showed that attitude prevailing, even as approval ratings for the latest leader began to edge upwards. As the next general election draws closer, Badenoch may be accepting that she has to adopt the Lib Dem approach and focus on winning seats, not votes. And until the change in the voting system that Andy Burnham conjured up to add spice to his conference speech, actually materialises, that strategy may be her only option.
The Birmingham conference hall displayed its jubilation as Kemi declared her ambitions in her usual style, an approach her fans characterise as “feisty” but others see on a spectrum ranging from “aggressive” to “vicious”. David Cameron’s “hug a hoodie” niceness has been long buried: now the Tories want to build another 50,000 prison places in a country which already locks up a higher proportion of people than other countries in western Europe and with measurably worse results.
While it is a policy with direct appeal to readers of the Daily Mail and former Tory voters who moved to the hard right Reform or Restore UK parties, it will grate with those who chose instead to give their support to the Lib Dems. But Badenoch could not do touchy-feely even if blindfolded and dropped in a maze. Any idea of her eschewing old-style politics and accepting Burnham’s suggestion that the adversarial style should be forsworn was eradicated within the first few sentences of her big conference speech: she was in full attack-dog mode.
So far from opening the party door to middle-of-the-road Tories, the tribe now represented by former Cabinet ministers Dominic Grieve and David Gauke and Ruth Davidson, the recent leader of Scottish Tories, she continues to bar it shut. When, under the umbrella of upstart lobby group Prosper UK, they offered to help the Conservatives come up with winning policy ideas, she was contemptuous.
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She was equally dismissive of the entire Brexit issue, effectively shutting down debate in her party despite Burnham’s acknowledgement of the deep and lasting damage it has inflicted on the country and his determination to rebuild the EU relationship. However justified his position is, her stance may not be quite the deterrent to Brexit-haters as it first appears. While the polls show overwhelming acceptance that Brexit was a mistake, they also show widespread reluctance to repeat the agonies of the referendum that ensured such self-harm.
The Badenoch party is narrow-focus and not far removed from “the nasty party” that former prime minister Theresa May feared it might be perceived to be more than 20 years ago. Her hope must be that in some wealthier constituencies, the promise to let the better-off hold on to more of their money – no so-called “mansion tax” and pass on more of it to their offspring will trump all other concerns.
That may be a smaller number than she judges. The real wealth in the UK is concentrated in very few hands, and much of it is secured in trusts that cannot be prised open. A hefty tranche of the rest can flee the country, as demonstrated by the recent exit of multi-millionaires which now threatens to become a stampede.
So while Badenoch’s plan may be based on an exaggerated idea of the wealth of the nation, so Burnham’s plans for a more generous state may also be founded on a faulty assumption about the cash that could be at his disposal.
