he Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, will march on to the conference stage in Birmingham feeling buoyed. "Kemi's soaring," coos the Sun, and that sums up the prevailing wisdom. More than four in 10 Britons think she is doing well as Tory leader, compared with a third who think otherwise. As Nigel Farage's stock has plummeted thanks to scandals over a £5m personal gift and donations from crypto billionaires, the polling suggests that the Conservatives could regain the mantle of Britain's main rightwing force.
Yet Badenoch has been the beneficiary of circumstance. Her tenure as opposition leader has been defined by Keir Starmer's project imploding almost as soon as it gained power. When Reform UK enjoyed its seismic polling lead, the Tory plight was double-edged: they were starved of attention, but that inevitably resulted in a lack of scrutiny, too. It has been easy for Badenoch to appear formidable while her opponents have disintegrated.
With the Conservatives now back in the race, the spotlight falls on Badenoch. Let us consider the absurdity of her proposed air defence system. Our would-be prime minister denied comparing it to Israel's Iron Dome, despite the term appearing in both a press release and a newspaper article under her own name. This amateurishness is one thing, but even on its own terms, her proposal is a mess. It will "protect the whole United Kingdom, our sovereign territories and British bases overseas", she claims, which would be impossible for the £10bn over 10 years she is proposing to spend on it. The former British general Richard Barrons suggests such a system would cost more than £100bn.
What does this say about Badenoch's sense of priorities? The actual urgent national security threat Britain faces is not volleys of missile attacks, but the climate emergency. There were estimated to be thousands of excess deaths from heatwaves this summer, while our intelligence services warn of serious disruption to our food supply from 2030. Yet Badenoch has committed to repealing the Climate Change Act and claimed that net zero by 2050 is "impossible" without bankrupting Britain. This not only contradicts the conclusion of the government's statutory climate scientific advisers, but Badenoch herself. As a Treasury minister in 2021, she told parliament that it would cost less than 2% of GDP, largely from "increased investment in growth markets of the future". Even three former Tory prime ministers have criticised Badenoch's shift against net zero – including the former rightwing pin-up Boris Johnson.
Then there's her economic agenda. A year ago, Badenoch declared that she sought to become Britain's version of Argentina's far-right president, Javier Milei. His government has imposed devastating cuts to pensions, universities and public healthcare, while poverty is once more surging. Badenoch proposes welfare cuts worth £23bn, and misleads the public as she does so. In May, she declared: "For the first time ever, the total welfare bill is now higher than total receipts from income tax." This has been the case since 2011, and as the UK Statistics Authority noted in a letter rebuking her, this was misleading for other reasons: the gap had actually narrowed in recent years, and most of the welfare bill goes to pensioner benefits, including the state pension.
What would £23bn in cuts mean? They would include stripping workers with indefinite leave to remain of social security – people who have lived here for years, worked and paid taxes. That would not only be an injustice to them – consider that there is already a staffing crisis in sectors such as social care that immigration restrictions are worsening. She would reinstate a two-child benefit cap that would drive hundreds of thousands of children into poverty. Most of the rest would fall on the shoulders of sick and disabled people, including those receiving support while they work.
Consider this too: while we still live with the consequences of the 2008 financial crash, Badenoch proposes ending the ringfence for big banks separating retail and investment activities, and reducing their capital requirements.
What of her authoritarianism? Badenoch has declared free speech to be "the birthright of every citizen", yet has advocated a blanket ban on pro-Palestinian protests. The justification is conflating opposition to genocide with threats to Jewish people, but this is a Tory leader who, when asked about Gaza, said that "Israel is fighting a proxy war on behalf of the UK". Withdrawal from the European convention on human rights and repealing the Human Rights Act would strip citizens of crucial protections against an overbearing executive and abuses of state power. Badenoch advocates an ICE-style mass deportation apparatus with sweeping powers of surveillance – directly mimicking an institution across the Atlantic that snatches people from the street and kills migrants and US citizens alike.
Her attitude to the rights of minorities, meanwhile, is underlined by her commitment to scrap the public sector equality duty in its entirety. As a minister in 2021, she backed it, saying it helped ensure "that fairness is at the heart of everything we do".
Yet the average punter knows little about Badenoch. The increasing extremism and scandals of Farageism have allowed her to appear somehow more reasonable and stable in comparison. But Badenoch is easily the most rightwing Tory leader in the party's history. Her programme is a wishlist of rightwing zealots – one which would be ruinous to our social fabric. Yet few have bothered to look under the bonnet. The danger is that Britain discovers what Badenoch really stands for only when she is close enough to power to put it into practice.