LIVE: Antisemitism, Man City & abolishing the Triple Lock

Coffee House Shots

The panel examines Kemi Badenoch's first year leading the Conservative Party, highlighting her increased confidence, a strategic shadow cabinet reshuffle, and the ongoing debate over whether to force an early

Key takeaways

• Kemi Badenoch has transitioned from nervous overthinking to confident leadership, earning praise from MPs and moderate voters despite lingering Conservative brand tarnish.
• The party is pursuing a strategy of going right on the economy to win back wealthy southern Lib Dem and Labour defectors who fear future tax hikes under Burnham.
• A recent shadow cabinet reshuffle brought in fresh faces like Katie Lamb and Nick Timothy, aiming to inject energy but still lacking full party association with Badenoch.
• The Green Party's passing of a
• motion presents both a moral crisis and a political opportunity for the Conservatives to rally moderate voters against perceived extremism.
• Panelists agree the pensions triple lock is financially unsustainable, with most shadow cabinet members privately supporting its abolition despite public defense.

Main topics

• Kemi Badenoch leadership & reshuffle
• Conservative election strategy & polling
• Green Party antisemitism motion

Notable quotes

"I get better every day."

Conclusion

The episode underscores a Conservative Party at a strategic crossroads, leveraging Badenoch's improved personal brand and

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:00) 🎵 Speaker 7 (0:05) Hello and welcome to this special recording of Coffee House Shots, live from Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham. Please put your hands together and welcome to the stage Tally Fraser, James Heal and Tim Shipman. Speaker 5 (0:25) Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for coming today here at Conservative Party Conference. My name is James Hill. I'm the Spectator's Deputy Political Editor. I'm delighted to be joined today by Tim Shipman, our Political Editor, and Tali Fraser, sorry, one of our contributing writers and writers at large. So with that, Tim, you think about the journey, the last 12 months. It was 12 months ago, Kemi Bainock really started kind of improving. The Kemi comeback so-called began. We've had her now 12 months on. Her ratings have improved. What do you make from the big picture of how the Speaker 6 (0:55) Tories are doing? Things are obviously very much healthier in terms of the vibes than they were. A year ago, Kemi was, if not on the rocks, at least heading towards them. I think the big picture is this is a, you know, an opportunity has opened up here. You know, Andy Burnham has arrived. He's obviously a more formidable campaigner and political operator than Keir Starmer was. But you look at that Speaker 1 (1:17) speech and it is boilerplate 1970s socialist kind of messaging. And that puts the economy Speaker 6 (1:24) back on the agenda as the thing where an opposition party can get some traction. And that is what is Speaker 1 (1:32) now beginning to happen. You know, the numbers have turned already. This is a moment of opportunity for the Conservative Party. So that's the good news. The bad news is. Some polls still have you on 17%. You're arguably slightly lower than when Kemi Badenoch took over. And, you know, this change has not happened. There's huge buzz around this conference. But you go in the press room, it's half empty. You go in the commercial sort of site, there's virtually nothing there. There's not even a bookshop. They've had to create this blue room next to it, which would normally have been exhibition space. Business is not here. There isn't, you know, that much buzz. in and around the conference. At the moment, if Burnham calls an election at some point in the next six months, the chances are he will get back into government with some kind of Lib Dem and or Greens or SNP melange. Speaker 6 (2:20) If you go longer, it's a battle on the right to see who can be the dominant force. And that is frankly an important battle to win. But when you are watching conference, try Speaker 1 (2:30) and understand this. This is the strategy. I don't know how much of this they want public, but I've been told this by numerous people. The plan is go right on the economy in order to win left-wing voters. Now, if that doesn't make any sense, basically they think there's a huge group of people who are sick to death of Conservative rule after all those years at the last election and might have Speaker 6 (2:52) voted Lib Dem or Labour, but they are... reasonably wealthy people in the South who don't want to be taxed into oblivion, don't much like a lot of what Burnham's saying. They think reopening Brexit, well, they probably didn't want to leave and would ideally want to be back in, but they think having that argument again is completely pointless and stupid and will be counterproductive. They're not interested in electoral reform. All they're interested Speaker 1 (3:12) in is the notion that they're already feeling Labour's going to tax them some more. So those people are winnable back on a fairly hard Thatcherite right wing. economic prospectus. So ironically, you go right to get left-wingers back from the sort of Blairite Labour people and Lib Dem people in the South. But by getting them back, you're then more likely to get reform people back as well, because there is a chunk of reform, and no one wants to tell me exactly what they think the chunk of reform is, that basically will support the dominant force on the right, because they want a centre-right government. But you have the core of people in this party, you have... Katie Lamb, Nick Timothy, you have Neil O'Brien, probably returning Rupert Harrison. And that looks to me like the core of a decent cabinet in 2034. The question is, can you make it 2029 rather than 2034? And talking Speaker 5 (4:04) of vibes, I mean, last night, Tali, we were both at the Conservative Home drinks, the 1922 drinks, with La Creme de la Creme of the Parliamentary Party. And Kevin Badenoch, I mean, talking about the change from a year ago, was practically purring she was so confident in her speech. Tell us about that and the mood in the room. Speaker 2 (4:18) Yeah, I mean, she was buzzing. You could sense it from her. And this is part of the change that we've seen basically over the past year. And she admits this herself. She was slightly overthinking when she first took on the Tory leadership in almost everything. she did. And she was taking too long to make decisions and she was getting nervous about which path to take or which approach to use. Now that she's sort of settled in, she's effectively allowed her own personality to come out. And actually, I think that's what a lot of the members seem to really like. And a lot of people as well outside of politics, not necessarily beginning to take notice in the Tory party proper. but beginning to take notice of Cammy Badenoch and the clips of her from the Commons where people say, oh, she's owning Keir Star, she's owning Andy Burnham. Schooled. Destroyed. Destroyed. Cammy Badenoch. Destroyed. But you're sort of seeing it in the way that she's communicating. And last night at the Conhome 1922 drinks, she was just very confident and it... translates to her MPs as well, who were sort of going around extolling the change and, you know, the past year and what they've experienced. But even then, there were some people that I was speaking to who thought there's still a little bit of the party being on the back foot and still responding to the government, where actually there are opportunities as the opposition to still try and set an agenda. And one suggestion... to me, by a few people, was, you know, if Andy Burnham is thinking about a snap election, you know, if we're saying we're ready for a snap election, why don't we come out and say it? Why doesn't Kemi say? bring it on, you're ruining the country. We know that tax rises are coming. If you want an election, put it to us and we're ready to fight this. And then if Andy doesn't do it, you know, you can make him look weak. And if he does do it, you can say you've pressured him into it. But it's whether the party is actually ready and you've got sort of the finances and all the things around it to go into a snap election and whether the public... is ready to accept a Tory party under Kemi. I Speaker 5 (6:32) mean, that's the question, isn't it, Tim? Particularly, we talk about Kemi's ratings and the party's been Keminised in some way, and you look at how much of the branding is around a strong leader, but the party brand is still pretty tainted, isn't it? Speaker 1 (6:42) Yeah, it is. I mean, the interesting thing from what Tally was saying is we had Jonathan Ashworth, former Shadow Cabinet Labour Speaker 6 (6:47) Minister, on the YouTube show last week, and he was saying he thought the Tories had missed an opportunity by not. arguing for an election. Now, clearly, Speaker 1 (6:55) the Conservative Party is not quite ready for an election. You haven't got all your candidates in place yet. But there's not a lot to be lost by doing it, because if he's going to do it, you might as well get some credit. And if he's not going to do it, as you say, you can say he's running scared. The Bader Not popularity thing is interesting. I sat in a focus group with a bunch of voters in Lincolnshire who are former Conservative voters who did not... vote Conservative at the last election, are open to voting Conservative, but not yet ready to vote Conservative. And the vast bulk of them were quite impressed by her. They quite like Burnham, but they think he won't deliver. They quite like her, and they quite like the sort of punchy, aggressive stuff. The interesting thing from a conversation I had yesterday with one of the leading pollsters was that he said, look, the problem she's got is that a lot of the people... who like her but not the Conservative Party, are not yet willing to vote Conservative. They are those Lib Dem and ex-Labour, you know, sort of Blairite-type southern voters who might look at her and think, great, but the tarnish to the brand is still a problem, which is why in the medium term it's probably better for this party to have a longer lead time until the election. I do think there is still an element of her personality Speaker 6 (8:05) which is, you know, I sat down... Last night with a former senior person from number 10 who said to me, you know, the Conservative Party is only ever in panic or complacency mode. This time last year, Speaker 1 (8:17) it was 100 % full panic. And this year it is 100 % full