As the third day of the Conservative party conference 2025 wraps up, the desperately needed feelgood factor that a conference ought to provide, hasn’t quite arrived yet.
While Tory leader Kemi Badenoch’s speech received enthusiastic applause, and one of two other big hitters whipped up the crowd, the atmosphere according to the right-wing political commentator and GB News presenter Tom Harwood has been like a “ghost town”.
After the disastrous July election last year, which saw them booted from office retaining just 121 seats, and losing many of their big names in the process, they would have hoped a conference could be the place to restore a bit of swagger.
But from the get-go any positive headlines have been drowned out by stories of mis-spelt chocolate bars and more defections.
Talking to Quays News, Tom Harwood says : “It’s been a precipitous decline (for the Tories), and you can feel a sense of that in the party conference”.
Although, Harwood says, the atmosphere “has livened up a little bit” since Sunday, it’s far from a party mood.
The latest yougov voting intention polls suggests the party would finish fourth in an election if it was held now, behind Reform, Labour and the Liberal Democrats. It’s a long way back. (Yougov Poll).
With Reform UK snapping up prominent Tories (Dorries, Anderson, Keith Prince) to join their ever growing party in both physical size and national support, the spotlight is on whether Kemi Badenoch can turn it around.
Harwood goes onto reflect that after last year’s election wipe-out Badenoch and the rest of the party “scurried away”. He goes on: “They started all these policy commissions, started to do all the detailed works but left a vacuum in opposition just at the moment the government became unpopular, and into the vacuum stepped one Nigel Farage”.
“It was a mistake not to have those policies set out from the starting point” says Harwood. “That vacuum created space for reform. This would have been a fine strategy in the world of just Labour and the Tories” but with a more pluralistic and multi-party system it simply just wont cut it.
Harwood says one veteran Tory suggested to him that this is “Badenoch’s first party conference, but also her last”.
This Yougov poll shows over half of Tory members say Kemi Badenoch should not lead the party into the next election. [YOUGOV poll)
Harwood says it’s about them “finding their niche” and not trying to “out- Reform Reform.” He believes they must find the message that cuts through and attempt to rebuild.
Manchester 2025 is coming to an end, but after Robert Jenrick’s “no white faces” comment, once again a negative story is dominating the Conference headlines.
They have time, the election is at least 4 years away, but the momentum needs to shift soon.
Harry Chisnall
St Peters Square, Manchester.