Is the Tory brand beyond repair

Subscribe to The Spectator and get twelve weeks of Britain's most incisive politics coverage, unrivalled books and arts reviews, and so much more. All for just twelve pounds. Not only that, but we'll also send you a twenty pounds Amazon gift card absolutely free. Go to www. spect ator.com forward slash voucher to claim this offer now Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I am Tim Shipman, Political Edge of the Spectator , and we're going to do something a little bit unusual today. While the Labour leadership contest brackets, the Makerfield by election continues in the background, we are going to talk today about the Tories. I know that's what you've all been waiting for. And I have two very special guests, Noah Hoffman, political correspondent for the magazine , who has written a piece which effectively outlines the argument that Kemi Blade Knox team are making about the progress she's made. And I'm also very pleased to be joined by my old mucker, Mr. Lee K leading uh public affairs companies uh where he advises uh businessmen on how not to do things having witnessed it as Boris Johnson's director of communications and nearly his uh chief of staff. Anyway, welcome to you both. So we had the local elections the, narrative I mean up my argument would be that the um the Tories have done rather well at spinning uh that they sort of emerge from this in decent shape. Noah, just take us through the column. So from my conversations with those who work very closely with Kemi Badenok. I think they aren't under any illusion that the Tory party are in dire straits, that the local election results were abysmal and the party's brand is in the gutter. But where they are happy is with the progress of Kemi Badknock's personal image, her personal popularity ratings, and how she is progressing as a politician in the House of Commons. Now, if we go back to this time last year, there was already discussion among the commentariat, among Westminster and Tory members as well that Kemi Badenock may not make it past party conference. Yeah, sorry about that. I think we're not a big one. Seemed like the right thing to write at the time. We all played a part. And this is because she made a decision, a very controversial decision, to stop, shut up, take herself out of the limelight, and take time to think about where the party should go next and what its policies were going to be. During that time, a giant void was present and it was filled immediately by Nigel Farage and Reform. And this obviously was hugely detrimental to the Tories because they just weren't part of the narrative, and to some extent they're still not either. But anyway, come Tory conference, her allies say this was the first of three turning points on her path to renewal, so to speak. So the first is the speech she gives it. The first is the speech, they describe it as this barnstorming moment where she changes the image of the Tories from effectively the Lib Dems but who call themselves conservatives, the party of the Boris Wave, sorry Lee, and the party I'd already left of um fair enough of um bloated welfare bill, etc. So she announces formally that they we've gotta get out of the ECHR, that I've got to scrap net zero to abolish stamp duty among other policies. They say this was point one that she started turning heads. And we'd all been building that moment up as a bit of a sort of Jenric against uh Badenok moment. And Jenric gave a uh by his standards a pretty serviceable speech a day or so before. But I think everybody walked away from that saying, Okay, that was a good speech. He had a proper bit of policy that made everybody go, Ta da Oh gosh, actually, oh that's quite interesting. And the perfor that you know the performance was good. So what 's turning point two Turning point two was her blistering response to Rachel Reeves's budget speech. The response to a budget speech by an opposition leader rarely cuts through, but Kemi Badenok's very sassy, straight to the point style that included a lot of good gags and a lot of off-the-cuff, iconic moments, so to speak, went viral on social media, radio st ations were randomly getting text messages in from members of the public s praising the speech. The third turning point, her allies argue, was when she fired Robert Jenrick. They said this point was relatable to the public because as one insider put it, everyone's had to deal with someone like Robert Jenrick before, someone who's always on your back at work who you know is just wielding the knife right behind you. The fact Lee coming out in hives at the thought of Dominic Cummings. A slightly blurry Zoom call was kind of iconic as well. And they say these are the three main events that as a result, see her personal popularity ratings very steadily and consistently. And just give us the numbers. What how has hers gone up and how does that compare with the party? Okay, so only twenty-five percent of adults say their view of the Conservatives has improved since the last election, and only 29% say that the Conservatives can turn things around and win the next election, compared to Kemi's personal rating, which is on net net negative 17. This all sounds really bad, but that is actually higher than Keir Starmer's approval rating, Nigel Farage's approval rating, obviously Zach Polanski's as well, the only leader who is above her is Ed Davy, but Kemi has been on a consistent trajectory going upward. She's not really dipped Yes. So uh we're in violent agreement on all these points for the biggest I mean I guess Lee that the the conclusion to that is that all three of those moments are what you might call beltway moments a bit. You are not convinced that it's all going as well as they are trying to convince themselves. Well just tell us what where you're coming from. You wrote a piece earlier in the week. You've been uh popping up on rival broadcast outlets, very disappointing. But uh here you are to provide the definitive account So firstly I would say I'm in broad agreement with many of Noah's points. I think it's an excellent piece uh in the spectator, which I recommend everybody reading. I think it gives a really good reflection of the current Tory party thinking. But if we look just simply at the facts and not any of the spin that's coming out of um Tory High Command, the Conservatives um after almost two years of denouncing spin. We've had nearly two years of sort of Kemi in charge of the Conservative Party, so it's it's a sizeable amount of time and we've just had um a you know a set of elections that I think is a good barometer for where we are. Uh the Conservatives lost n you know um more than uh five hundred seats and eight councils from a particularly low base. You know, it by any metric, these are incredibly poor um election results. This is in the wake of a government in total chaos. Um you know, Keir Starmer is himself clinging on, so it's not like there is a strong government that's sort of pulling things in. The polling um of the party is now lower than when it was uh in its nad ar of uh Liz Truss. If we were to project these results into a general election, we're looking at you know potentially fewer than a hundred seats, which would make the party the third largest party in this country. And we can see that people are moving over to reform. So it's not a choice between you know Labour and uh the Tories. People have looked at things and they've said we want change. Broadly in this country there is a view that seventy percent of people think the country's on the wrong course, going down the wrong avenues. You do wonder what the other thirty percent sort of number people are calling not just for change anymore. It's moving on. People want radical change. They really think things are wrong. They want radical change. Yet only six percent of vot ers would describe the Conservative Party as radical. Um and and the stat that most worried me out of all the ones that we saw, and I think was the impetus for for writing the piece, is that of those who've left the Conservative Party and moved to reform, um, six out of seven said they would not go back to the Conservative Party, even if reform failed to deliver the change that they've stated. So we're not see ing a brief flirtation with a different party. We are witnessing the permanent abandonment of the Tory party under Kemi's watch. And some of those things are I think, you know, are not Kamie's fault , but um I do think there's a couple of points that are worth making. One is that first year where she abandoned the field. I think strategically that was an incredibly bad error. You cannot leave a vacuum in politic s and Nigel Farage and Reform have done an excellent job at filling that vacuum and being seen in the eyes of the country as the change vehicle on the right. The second element is and then we can sort of move on to this a bit more, but it's the lack of any moral story. It's a lack of understanding of what is the coalition of voters we are trying to trying to sort of build. Who are the Conservative Party? What are they for? There's a lot of these larger strategic questions still remain unanswered. We've got tactical uh you know interventions, we've got good PMQs, we've got a party that is falling into the same old trap of talking They are not focused on what do the voters want, what do the voters expect to see from the party and how are we going to deliver it? How can we be that change? And the final point before I'll stop whittering on, is on this personal ratings point. Because they seem to think that ultimately she will kind of drag the party up behind her, is the is the argument that I think there's not a lot of evidence that that is the case. No. No, well we so we've seen, I mean, you know, there are some positives in the personal ratings. In the in the research we did with you know with Merlin people they described Kemi as intelligent, they described her as a leader, these are all you know really positive things. But they also don't really see the Consvaterives as a threat. So they also have license to be kind of nicer because they don't really care. They've stopped thinking about the Conservative Party. That is the big problem. On to Chemis Watch, people have they're not angry with a Conservatives anymore. They don't hate a two sides of the same group. They lack of interest is the real killer. And and if the Conservative the you know, there's I've had some criticism for for for writing this piece and you know why aren't you just being more supportive? But I I I think it's been a ph Well actually there's been quite a few private messages of support from Tory MPs and others who say this is obviously correct, but couldn't possibly say it. But I th you know I think we we would all benefit from a strong opposition and a strong Tory party, and the idea that we can have an ostrich strategy and simply ignore the reality of the electorate absolutely baffles me. Does she need to take time to reflect on how the brand is not moving? To understand what that coalition supports are, really look at the strategic approach and start to change it and move it more towards the voters, maybe refresh some of the team in and around her to have a bit of a different look and a different strategic approach. You had a line on that, Mara, I think, didn't you, on the on the team? I be I my impression from reading your piece is that they basically think there's not much point refreshing the team at this point because no one's heard of any of them anyway. So you swap one person no one's ever heard of for another. It'd be better to sort of wait until people pay more attention. Is that that's basically what's the point . So there's been a lot of discussion within C C HQ about whether to get rid of all the old timers. Melstride, the Shadow Chancellor being sort of Yeah, Melstride, pretty tell there's quite a few of them hanging about. And to bring in all the fresh faces and the fresh talent, so people like Katie Lamb, for instance, who are cutting through within the sort of Westminster bubble so far and could potentially cut through to the public even more. But the decision was made not to do that because CCHQ aides and insiders thought it would just be pointless because if you ask your average man or woman on the street who is Mel Stride, they just would not have a clue. So if you replace him with someone else who's more sort of fresh, they wouldn't be fresh in the minds of the public ' nobcauseody knew who the old guy was anyway. I have someone I know someone who has a a house in the Devon village where Mel Stride has his second home and uh almost nobody knows who he is there either. So um you know, you can almost argue in his in his own town that uh he he's an enigma. Let's break this down though, Lee, because I think there's three things here. I think we all violently agree that the Tory brand is still in uh the proverbial use whichever analogy for the the smallest room you prefer at this point. Now your old mate, I say this uh with a slight glint in my eye, David Canzini, the former former Tory strategist, his view was it takes two years before you kind of can even start to rebuild after the kind of uh problems that you've had. I mean, as you say, we're now coming up on that two years. Is that brand so toast you think that there's uh that it's almost that's gonna be a drag anchor forever? The second point is is: what Kemi Badenok is doing actually wrong? Is there something else she should be doing instead? And you've kind of alluded a little bit to some of that. And then the third thing is really, is there somebody else? So I think we all agree the brand is problematic and maybe there's not much you can do about that at this point. But who should the the coalition be for the Conservative Party if if they're going to revive further than they have? So I'll I'll come to that in a second. I just would like to pick up quickly on Noah's Noah's point in and around um a potential reshuffle. I think it's incredibly insightful to look at how the centre is thinking when it's solely basically presentational. We don't want to move some of these senior old figures because the country won't notice that we've moved them. That's totally not the point. Um to build any effective team, it's about the people that you bring in. People are your most important commodity you have to build and arrange the strongest possible team. There are some very able up-and-coming Tories, I think, that you know could could certainly do a good job. We should be looking at who would do the best possible job in those roles. Who would you know, who would certain people in the government be most afraid of if they were shadowing them in and that work. We are seeing absolutely no cut through from any of those shadow roles I would argue. Let's give some of those, you know, up and comers a chance in the case. Who have you got in mind then? And um uh Noah's mentioned Katie Lamb, who I think we all think is doing reasonably well. Who else? When I speak to people around Shibana Mahmood, when she was Justice Secretary, they had a hell of a time up against Nick Timothy. I think Nick's yeah, Nick's Nick's Tim. And now she's the home secretary. They're up against Chris Philp, who puts the questions he's going to ask on Twitter the day before he asks them and has none of that sort of internal institutional knowledge that Nick Timothy has and that sort of feral sense of how do you cause trouble. I think Nick was one of certainly one of the ones I was thinking of. I think you've got Nick, you've got Katie. I think um Laura Trotts doing some good work, you see around and about and I think what what you notice with people like Laura and Clarketinio and Katie, they're hungry. They wanna make a mark. They will they you know they will go and fight every corner and I think the party's really crying out for that because if you're Pretty Patel or you're Mel Stride, they've had fantastic careers, you know, great um public servants, but I'm sure they'd probably look at it and think the the best days are probably slightly behind them. They're maybe not as enthused by opposition as you know, having had such huge jobs in government. Whereas if you've got a a Nick Timothy and a KT Lamb and those sorts of people, they'll run in it with everything they've got. So I think there's definitely a refresh of the team, and it shouldn't So they should be the bet the best people for the jobs. Obviously, should be what we're looking for. Maybe that's not what the leadership wants. I I remember Boris when one of our old um when we were chatting about reshuffle ourselves many years ago and we were sort of, you know, um making the point of getting some good rising stars into the cabinet that we can sort of blood and give opportunities to Rishi Sunak was one of them. Rishi Sunak was one of them. And h his view was actually in a cabinet you maybe do want old tired lions, not young, hungry ones, if you're the leader. So maybe there's an element um of that in the city. Well ironically Boris was right about that in the end, wasn't he, when it was? But what should she be doing? So uh as I sort of mentioned earlier, I think the first point of call is to define the coalition of voters needed? Like what is that coalition, the Tory Party going for? What is the pathway to power? And then sort of doing the work of you know, what what is it that energizes this voter base? How can we be uh d distinctive from labor and from reform? What is the moral story that we're trying to tell? Yeah. And I think, you know, an example of how that kind of thing works, you know, we'll go back to sort of twenty nineteen, I would say probably the only time in the last sort of ten years or so that the Tory party has has has effectively told great story. So a lot of time spent in the field before we, you know, move into power as well, not while we're you know in there, but a lot of time in the field trying to understand where people are, what is the problem, we could see very clearly, for example, that at that particular moment Brexit was the question uh that dominated things like the cost of living is now, like immigration is now, but Brexit in particular was the core issue. People felt that was a blocker to all sorts of issues that they really cared about, which was you know health, which was education, which was crime, etc. So you know, we worked you work through and you get the sort of get Brexit done. That's our sort of moral overarching frame work. And then the policies that you then pursue walk into the the tell a story themselves within your sort of moral framework. Is it aspiration? Is it you know a f Fur Day's pay for a fair day's work and all that kind of stuff? Is it how to get up and get on? What what basically is it a Thatcherite creed or is it something that now has to be slightly trimmed to the fact that people seem to want the state to do much more for it. I would I would I would argue that the the in terms of the coalition that you need now to be elected, it's still pretty similar to the sort of vote leave coalition to the twenty nineteen elition. So you know, sort of socially sort of conservative , but we can see in areas that people want huge reform needed to public services and all those sorts of things. You've got to be able to sort of cross over those two spaces. Reform have taken that space because of the for the reasons but also the absence of that first year. Now what it feels like to me is the government's basically said, oh yeah, we've lost sorry the government the the opposition I should say has felt like it said um we've lost that space now to reform so we won't fight it. So we'll sort of sit in the middle of Labour and reform. We don't want to be reform. So we're going to sit in this space and do nothing. Well, actually, they should be taking the fight to reform. There's plenty of question marks about Nigel Farage, there's plenty of question marks about reform in the eyes of the public. They are not embracing reform with open arms and thinking they're the solution. They just don't like anybody and they don't think anyone's providing that. So you need to be able to build and tell a moral story about how you can transform the country, how you can be the change agent. They have to make like again, 2019 Bob Boris establishment figure in every way, but he was created as a change agent within the politics of the time. He was the person that could create the change, that would get Brexit done, that could unlock our public services, that could make things better. They need to do that work to transform Kemi into a change agent. The party is a status quo party in an era when people want radical change. They have to shift that. And there is absolutely, no efforts that I can see to provide a strategic framework to transform how the party is seen, to transform how the brand is viewed. And that is a huge problem . If they were sitting here, Baden ok's team would say something like while Andy Burnham might become uh the leader of the Labour Party, might start chipping away at some of the reform support. Reform seemed to be covering their right flank by worrying about Rupert Lowe and getting more extreme on things and that this all could gradually open up a little bit of a space that we can walk into. What what is their hope, do you think? Do you think that they acknowledge what Lee is saying and and will want to go and be a bit more radical and a bit more kind of uh upfront about things or is there a lot of sort of is the policy basically sit around and hope do you think no so speaking to those around Kemi it's still very hard to get in policy terms a clear difference between the two parties. I think in policy terms they are very, very similar. What they argue will be the difference and will put clear blue water between the conservatives and reform is that one party is brash is will say and say anything to get elected without a plan to back it up, doesn't have the expertise, is a bit all over the place and unpalatable to some people. Whereas they have the same broad ideas, but they actually but the Tories think them through, this is what Kemi C would argue, think them through, crunch the numbers, have a plan, there's no back of a fag, packet maths behind their policies. So really they they're not when you speak to them they don't try and differentiate from reform too much on policy terms. It's sort of polite. It's miragism, isn't it? It is and it's about from the argument that I get from them is that it's about professionalism. Now, in my personal opinion , I feel like that difference is probably not going to be very clear to the public and I think a lot of people will just think, Well, why don't I go with where everyone else is going and go for a little bit . Exactly. So yeah, they're they're from her team have the same sort of broad ideas about where the sh country should go as reform, but they are pitching themselves as as people who can actually pull it off rather than reform who can talk a lot, but can they match the talk with action? And it's not very sexy and big, is it? But I mean ultimately Lee, I mean James Hill's written a fair bit about this in the magazine recently that, this sort of conver gence of interest between tourism reform. Is the best hope for the Conservative Party ultimately that they end up propping up a reform government with a a reasonable number of seats next time round and that if things implode in the way that a lot of sort of Tories would say they might, with a uh the kind of chaotic very personal leadership of Farage, that you might end up seeing some kind of Canadian merger at some point and that uh one of the leading Tories now or someone like Jenrik could end up running it rather than Ferrari. Is that is that the best they've got or is there something or do you think this can be turned around before the election? Yes. I th so I I I I do think the most likely outcome that we're heading for is a reform Tory coalition or some sort of agreement. I I I I I think it's almost impossible to imagine uh Kemi allowing a left wing coalition to to to govern But that you know they're going i the way the Tories are polling and the support base they have, the terms they would have to accept would be sort of treaty of Versailles uh terms I s I suspect. Um and so it's really important to start building support 'cause it strengthens your hand in any kind of future negotiations. Having eighty seats and having 150 are very different when you get to that. And again, just a point to go back to where we are in terms of strategy, in terms of how things are thinking, you know, people want radical change. So you have to be able to present yourselves as you know, both able to envisage and deliver radical change. And I'll just come back to those numbers again. You know, 70% say that we're in the wrong direction. We need radical change. Only six percent of people would describe the conservatives as being able to deliver that radical change. The most, the most, the most or use word to describe them was establishment. Reform are seen as you know by fifty percent the most likely vehicle to take on labour. All of these metrics, these are you know I'm not just talking about vibes and five people I know in Westminster but all tell me Kemi's great, therefore it must be true. We're talking about hard data points. Anyone who's got any chance on the right or left has to be the change agent. And that's what they have to figure out. How do they present her as a change agent? I think there's definitely something in delivery and can reform deliver and I think that's a a genuine . But they they need more than that because that feels like at the moment the only sort of argument. We've tried deliverism as well with Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer and it's not a big thing . But again it's but it's but but you've got to believe that they can deliver real change. You know, Kia, Rishi, the right line of people who are just this status quo, they are just the establishment, Kemi 's falling into that bracket. So is there someone who could do a better job in the current Conservative Party? Because clearly before Robert Genrick defected, he was had she fallen under a bus, he almost certainly would have won any uh leadership contests that that then followed. His departure has given them, you know, I think they' theyve feel got a lot more space and time to operate and build an argument and do all that kind of stuff. Is there any point replacing her? Is there anybody in there at the moment? I mean, should they just be saying to themselves with nine months to go before a general election, say Uh I I think they're you know they're both clearly out standing talents, but uh you know I th I think it you they've gotta have time in shadow roles that they can really show their credentials and abilities. It's far too soon, I think. And I you know, and I think it's reductive to say let's replace Kem, I don't think that really helps the Conservative Party. I don't really think it helps anything to be honest. But again, I would look at this is the moment to honestly assess progress and change course. I think you know if I was her, I'd be I'd be looking at the team. What do you do now? Apart from the reshuffle, what policies are missing? But I think but this is I think what we're talking about here is well let's start looking at how again how do you position yourself as as the change agent. They've got to be out there. They've got to be again, we talked about those policies. They very rarely even talk about it. Rather than a particular policy thing in some area or to a degree, again, I think , you know, we we we're talking about like what is what is the story we're trying to tell. Who are the co like you've got to do that work to try and identify where are we trying to be here and then have that kind of ruthless campaign efficiency to be out consistently telling your story and message. Let people hear how you are changed. Start convincing them that you can have change. Some of these policy areas we're talking about, you know, the ECHR and all those sorts of things. What does that mean? Okay, we will stop the boats and this is how we're gonna do it. We know people care about that. Boomf we we will be the ones trusted to do those things. How are we going to improve you know the cost of living and all those other sort of elements? But it's got to come under the the overarching narrative's gotta be one of change. At the moment, the conservative narratives is establishment and status quo that has to hugely shift. And that's not just uh a commons exercise, it is a policy exercise, but we have to be focused at voters. This is the big thing, it's constant focus uh commentary at uh SW1. There is no focus on voters. These are the people who will um determine the fortunes of the Conservative Party and they are saying very loudly we don't think you can deliver the change we want, we will not vote for you. That should be a good thing. Now a year ago, had someone not put the words Boris Wave on the vast uptick in net migration, you could have seen a world in which he was relevant. We're told he's talking now to Kemi semi regularly. You can see a world in which they deploy him to go and run interference with Farage in an election. But the fact that he's no longer even remotely talked about as any kind of alternative. It's quite a big it's the first time since in many years you and I have known each other where he's not been either in pole position or agitating for pole position or seeking a way back from some disgrace minor or major. Complete irrelevance now. No further comment. No further comment from Mr. K. Can I just add really quickly sorry on the conservative problem? So this is now stepping out of what her friends and allies say, and into me as a sort of neutral observer. I think you could possibly even stick David Attenborough or someone of that calibre as leader of the Conservative Party, but the brand is just so damaged that no one can fix it. And this is why I don't think it's a chemi problem. I think the brand is potentially and never never say , it could very well come back, but it's potentially just dead and and beyond being able to be revived. I don't see anyone who could do a better job than Baden ok is doing. I because I think you could say you could be the most charismatic, amazing, talented politician, but the public are so distraught by Tories record in government that they just don't want to go anywhere near it. Do we get a name change then Lee? I mean I remember David Davis running for the leadership many moons ago before he got spanked by David Cameron. And he had l and uh logo, new conservatives and all that sort of thing. Or is there some other kind of um some other name that would uh we keep hearing they might redo the logo. Yes, in my column it will detail how there's been a lot of conversations. They've had experts come in to discuss the idea of branding and how changing branding such as the logo could potentially change their fortunes and zero but still have a tree, it seems to me. It wouldn't help them as things stand. So I'm sure that was money well spent to some very you know, very happy consultant. Fantastic. We are available for all such work, should anyone need it. But what you 're expensive possibility of like can anyone actually change things really? Um there is an undoubtedly an opportunity still for the Conservatives because voters broadly dislike all political parties, um, it's just they seem to dislike the Tor ies more than some of the others at the moment. But I think again, if you spend time we've we heard all this sort of pre twenty nineteen Conservatives, you know, absolute mess, can't turn things around, um, you know, we'd almostost l to Corbyn, disastrous state of play. But you know, by being able to turn that around, have a focus on what voters actually want and showing that we were going to deliver that for them, and then ruthlessly, efficiently campaigning on that for month after