And so it begins.

Actually it has already started.

With Kemi Badenoch addressing the 2026 Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham telling attendees that only the Conservatives offer hope for the future.

ConservativeHome hosted the 1922 Committee’s welcoming reception last night where she added she was ready – and the party will be ready –  if Andy Burnham is lying and an election round the corner. She insists he’ll still go early.

As she herself conceded in her pre-Conference interview with me, last year was really all about her. Her survival as leader. Could she produce a Conference performance that those that backed her for leader in 2024 felt proved their faith in her, could she persuade those who’d backed others that the party was safe and viable in her hands and could she make members, activists and elected Conservatives feel that there was still something to fight for and the party would, and could recover.

It’s true it wasn’t everyone, but certainly most observers now say she used the Conference last year as a spring board for a markedly better year as leader than even those enthused by her Conference speech, her stamp duty announcement and her overall projection of being comfortable as ‘the boss’ had hoped or dreamed.

Lots has changed since 2025, and a lot of it in the last few months, but quite obviously the biggest – almost seismic given his majority and 2024 Election Victory – is that Keir Starmer has fallen. Ousted by his own side – hundreds of MPs who owed him their seats, and the Coronation of a new Leader. The official Opposition is now facing a new set of faces and a new challenge.

It’s almost too obvious to state, but I will, that Andy Burnham is light years ahead of Starmer on his ability to communicate a vision and a positive one. He’s just a better politician and the feel good vibe he is desperate to send out is landing. Reaction to Conference speech last week was effusive on the left, the over-arching verdict being, he was better and more inspirational than any Labour leader since Blair, and some go so far as to claim he was better.

Burnham has whether the right likes it or not shifted the agenda, altered the pitch and in doing so he has countered what he sees as Reform’s “Britain is broken, everything is terrible, and nobody but us has the answers” with his own brand of “I have a way forward that should bring hope and happiness to this country if only you’ll back me to make it happen”.

It’s a trap of course, and one the Conservatives must not fall into. The secret will be to provide a positive alternative to Burnham, whilst pointing out why neither his solutions nor Reform’s will actually solve the problems the British people face.

So far after last week the momentum is his. These next few days need to be a Conservative Party, not just a Kemi Badenoch response that can hold that in check.

Conservative Members seem to believe it can be done, and 70.4 per cent of them think the Burnham bounce won’t survive the Budget on the 28th of October or the winter months. A further 20 per cent don’t think it will last more than a few weeks. That might be be optimistic but it seems Labour are not the only ones who can ‘Hope, Again”.

We’ll be hearing today and tomorrow on ConservativeHome whether the Conservatives really are in a better place or whether they are in fact still stuck in a poll rut around 18 percent. Today we’ll have analysis from YouGov’s Patrick English and on Tuesday Lord Ashcroft has more polling detail for us. This morning however we can look at our pre-Conference Survey of grassroots members and see over half of them think the Conservatives have started to improve in Opposition, and expect to see a rise in their polling and a platform for winning significant numbers of seats at the next election (though for accuracy we should say that doesn’t mean ‘winning’) Note also a quarter of them 26 per cent think the Conservatives will struggle to do better than they have done over the last year.

One of the many things Burnham has thrust onto the political agenda is a possible change in our voting system. Not everyone in Labour likes it, but one wonders if just mentioning electoral reform is a kite being flown where it might attract a flock of yellow birds. There is no doubt the prevailing narrative – which I should remind readers doesn’t always make it correct that it’s ‘prevailing’ – is that Burnham either wants a win all to himself or to be assisted in winning by a left-ish alliance.

Our Survey responders do not seem at all keen on the arrival of some form of PR, with 76.9 per cent wanting to preserve ‘first past the past’ but it seems  the constituency link, the concept of local representation is the key factor, with a not insignificant 20.7 per cent saying they might support a change in the voting system if that link and concept was maintained.

Of course the idea of a left-coalition under Burnham has made the result of the next election – whenever that might be as that question alone seems up for debate – focus a good deal of attention back on the Right side of the equation. A quarter of members (25.6 per cent) who responded think some form of electoral pact should happen, that is significantly down from the last time we asked, in March of this year – though from everything Badenoch and Farage have been saying the prospect seems further away than it has ever been.

37.3 per cent back a coalition but no pre-election deal at all and brought about because of the result of an election. A further 31.3 percent are singing from the two leaders’ song sheet at the moment of no deal at all.

All though there were 2.3 per cent ‘Don’t know’ there was in fact 5 per cent of responders who had other options they favoured, these were mainly variations on the choices, with caveats or amendments.

Kemi Badenoch in her interview for us emphasised looking to the future, building the party brand up higher and cementing her own popularity with the public. From these results there is clearly enough belief in the Conservative party that that can be done, and a certain scepticism, that shouldn’t be ignored, at how hard that might be to do, and the chances of success.

The next few days in Birmingham might give us all clues as to the answers to those conundrums.