The Conservatives’ long road back to credibility

{"text":[[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":7.18,"text":"Britain’s Conservatives crashed last year to their worst-ever general election defeat. Then things got worse. Despite installing a young leader, Kemi Badenoch, touted as an original thinker, and the Labour government’s fumbled first year in office, the Tories are a distant third in the polls. Nigel Farage’s nationalist Reform UK has usurped their role as the main party of the right. Badenoch’s first party conference speech did conclude with a worthwhile pledge: to scrap stamp duty on primary residences. But her party has a long way to go to become the reasonable, credible opposition that Britain sorely needs. Much of her emerging platform runs in the wrong direction."}],[{"start":56.26,"text":"Badenoch said she would take time to reflect before unveiling her policies. Reform’s surging poll performance and the questions swirling around her own leadership have forced her to rush out several proposals that appear half-baked. Talk of creating a US-style “removals force” to deport from the UK 150,000 immigrants a year who do not have a right to remain raises questions over whether Britons, whatever they feel about migration, would really want such a thing, even if it were realistic."}],[{"start":93.19999999999999,"text":"Leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, rather than pushing to reform it, would place Britain alongside Russia or Belarus, and pose a risk to the settlement in Northern Ireland. Repealing the 2008 Climate Change Act would be a betrayal of the leadership the UK, and the Tories, have shown on the green transition, and the jobs and investment it has generated."}],[{"start":120.78999999999999,"text":"Chasing Farage’s Reform partway on such policies will not work, as voters tempted by such measures will always prefer the real thing. Nor are such steps destined to woo the younger voters that a party whose median supporter is now just under 60 desperately needs."}],[{"start":144.82,"text":"Faced with a Labour party struggling to tackle Britain’s fiscal and economic problems, and a Reform party offering illusory solutions, the Conservative priority ought to be to begin rebuilding its reputation for sound management. It is the one UK party that has shown a past ability to get to grips with spending while priming the economy with tax cuts, and addressing the debt. Here, as in the recognition that the Conservatives must strive once again to become the natural party of business and enterprise, there were some signs of encouragement."}],[{"start":184.26,"text":"Shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride’s plan to cut £47bn of public spending over five years on welfare and the civil service goes in the right direction, though further overseas aid cuts would be deeply regrettable. But there are still gaps between ambition and reality. Achieving such savings will need serious reforms that successive governments, including Tory ones, have ducked or mishandled. Badenoch’s new “golden rule” on ensuring half of spending cuts would be used to trim the deficit, with only half for tax cuts, seems merely common sense."}],[{"start":229.45,"text":"The £9bn pledge to scrap stamp duty is positive — the tax slows the property market and reduces mobility — but tricky to fund and implement. The fact that Badenoch rolled out such an attention-grabbing plan four years before the next general election is, moreover, a signal of her own political weakness. Her rival Robert Jenrick has built a grassroots following even as his Faragesque statements have demonstrated his lack of seriousness."}],[{"start":263.64,"text":"Like Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer last week, Badenoch’s unexpectedly confident speech may have bought her some time. But, like him, she may well face a challenge if her party performs miserably in English council and Scottish and Welsh parliament elections next May. The danger is that she will meanwhile be sucked into making further ill-considered gambits to shore up her base, rather than developing serious proposals for government."}],[{"start":305.9,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1759978850_9336.mp3"}