Kemi Badenoch has been warned she has six months to turn the Conservative Party around or she will face a leadership challenge.
As she marks her first year as leader, senior Tory sources have told The Independent that Ms Badenoch will have to go if the party is hit by another terrible set of results in the May elections in Wales, Scotland and English local councils – with Robert Jenrick the favourite to succeed her.
While Ms Badenoch has put in some good performances at Prime Minister’s Questions in recent weeks and was widely praised for her conference speech, critics have noted that she has failed to improve the Tories’ historically low position in the polls.
One senior Tory source said: “Before Kemi’s speech we were averaging 17 points in the polls and after Kemi’s speech we were averaging 17 points in the polls. Nothing has changed and we are going nowhere with her.” It is also regularly pointed out that the party was averaging around 24 per cent a year ago, when she became leader.
Meanwhile a shadow minister complained that after the conference speech, where she unveiled a number of policies including abolishing stamp duty, she has largely gone to ground again.
They said: “She gave a half decent speech at conference and now she thinks she can hibernate all winter. She forgets she’s the leader of the opposition and not a hedgehog.”
Another critic described Ms Badenoch as “the living dead” with “everybody waiting for the end”.
They added: “It may be that there is a move against her in January or February as the reality of the electoral oblivion that is to follow sinks in, but it will probably be May now – but not later.”
However, one despondent MP has expressed fears that if “we wait as long as May it may be too late”.
The veteran MP added: “Robert [Jenrick] clearly has more energy, more focus and better ideas. We are adrift at the moment and if this continues we will be finished, because Reform will have been able to establish itself as the main party of the centre-right in people’s minds.”
Since Ms Badenoch became leader, Nigel Farage has seen a steady stream of defections from the Conservatives to his Reform UK. High-profile scalps include sitting MP Danny Kruger, who was a shadow minister under Ms Badenoch, as well as former Tory party chair Sir Jake Berry, but there are also dozens of councillors who have switched allegiance, including 20 during the Conservative Party conference last month.
The party in parliament is speculating about which of their colleagues will be the next to be unveiled as a Reform defector with a number said to be ready to cross over.
While there is appetite among some Conservative MPs for a leadership change to halt the surge of Reform and allow the party to re-establish itself as a contender, there are also concerns that the public will not forgive the party if it opts for yet another leadership change, given that Ms Badenoch is the fifth person to take charge of the Tories since 2019.
One MP said: “We will look stupid if we change leader yet again,” adding: “It is like not liking the Brexit result and trying to change it, you just make people angry by trying that.
“The number of times it came up on the doorstep during the election that we had changed leader so often was a real problem. Kemi needs time.”
Pollsters believe things are improving for the Tory leader in terms of her public recognition, but it is not translating into positive support for her party.
Tory peer and pollster Robert Hayward said that recent council by-election results suggested that Ms Badenoch “may be turning a corner”, noting that a recent YouGov poll showed she had 51 per cent approval among Tory voters.
Pollster Professor Sir John Curtice agreed that her recognition is improving with the public, but warned: “The problem is that it is not translating into an increase in her popularity. So for every voter who likes her there is one who does not.”
He suggested that Ms Badenoch needs to do more to “disown Boris Johnson and Liz Truss” to improve their credibility among voters, especially “because she is focussing on the economy”.
He said: “People need to believe that they have a plan for the economy and are competent enough to do it and they don’t have that yet.”
The problems for the Tory leader come as a secret memo seen by The Independent has revealed that the party appears to have lost touch with many of its grassroots organisations.
An email sent out by Conservative Campaign Headquarters to association parties said: “We are still missing lots of information from associations across the country.”
There are 131 associations (out of 600) that the Tories do not currently hold an office email address for.
