Conservatives united behind Kemi Badenoch – but party still needs to win over voters

Policy announcements aside, what stood out in this speech for me was a broader point. The veteran Conservative elections strategist Sir Lynton Crosby once suggested the party ought to “scrape the barnacles off the boat” as he put it, in reference to unpopular policies that could cause the Tories a headache during an election campaign.

This speech felt like Badenoch revelling in pointing at the clean hull of the Conservative ship, what she sees as those barnacles removed, not least the high-profile defections of Jenrick and Suella Braverman.

There was a striking glee and anger in her reflections about Reform UK. She sought to portray them as sleazy and pointedly decided to lean into an argument of recent months about Englishness.

Braverman has argued that, given her Asian heritage, “I’m not English”.

“I’m proud to be British. My family and ancestors have a link to Britain which spans centuries. But in no way are we English,” she wrote on social media last month, external, adding: “Englishness is an ethnicity.”

Badenoch expressed her personal fury at this, saying that as the mother of mixed-race children “I don’t want to explain to my son, when we’re watching our brilliant England team play football, that some people don’t think our black players are English”.

The recurring message, today and over the last few days, is Badenoch cannot stand Reform and won’t work with them before or after the next general election.

But what she said amounted to an attack on Reform’s character and the judgement of their prominent figures, rather than a significant focus on the policies we hear talked about most often by Nigel Farage.

Badenoch did talk about immigration, but not at length. She largely left the issue – and the Conservative policy to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, as Reform also advocates – to her shadow home secretary Chris Philp who spoke before her.

Instead, Badenoch grounded this speech in the big picture tussle to be trusted between Labour and the Conservatives – and in particular who was better placed to deliver a growing economy.

In tone, language and public enthusiasm for the argument, Badenoch and Andy Burnham are quite the contrast with their immediate predecessors Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer.

Badenoch and Burnham both look like they are enjoying themselves on the stage, and are both enthusiastic purveyors of the core of what are their very different worldviews.

Badenoch acknowledged this with what she called the “battle for the soul of this nation” in the opening minute or so of her address. It is a trailer for the debate to come this autumn and beyond.