Make no mistake. There is an active plot against Kemi Badenoch at this party conference in Manchester.
The leadership will never be entirely sure which mishaps, bad stories and unfortunate events are the consequence of a deliberate strategy – and which are just another thing going wrong with a party straining to stay afloat.
This plot does not have rigid KPIs. There is no timeframe attached to its efforts. The goal is only to undermine her rather than oust her immediately. But the Tory wars have not gone away.
We may have seen Labour tensions on display at their conference in Liverpool last week, but nobody does internecine party-on-party hostility quite like the oldest political party in the world. Like Britain, are the Tories becoming ungovernable?
Take the defection of a one-time donor to Kemi Badenoch’s leadership campaign a year ago, which I revealed this lunchtime. Is that part of the plot or not? CCHQ will never know.
Either way, it’s serious because of the lessons it teaches us.
The background – which can be heard on the Politics At Sam And Anne’s podcast which has just been released – is that veteran public affairs professional Mark Gallagher has abandoned Kemi Badenoch in favour of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
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While he still is understood to like Badenoch personally, he thinks the stories are not a strong enough medicine for the country.
Gallagher is a long-term supporter of several political parties including the Brexit party and, having given £2,000 only, he is not Badenoch’s largest donor by a long way.
There is a suggestion that Badenoch did not respond quickly enough to his messages and attempts to help her.
Look at – and internalise – the response from the Tories.
An aide to Badenoch said: “She gets 20 texts every minute from MPs, friends, ex-MPs, supporters, peers, people offering advice and so on. She endeavours to go back to everyone, but realistically she’s running the world’s oldest political party, doing media interviews, having meetings, doing visits, and being a wife and mother of three young children. So it would be churlish to get quite so upset about timely responses.”
You can sense the intensity of the frustration – the anger at criticism. The willingness to thrash back.
Are these wise feelings to succumb to at this point?
The Tories claim this does not amount to a “defection” because Gallagher hadn’t been a member of the Conservative Party since 2020.
However, they do not contest that he gave to Badenoch’s leadership and now Gallagher is helping her rival.
Top Tories talk of three key moments in the coming months. Post May elections, which could be perilous without signs of electoral improvement. Then the November 26 budget if she doesn’t perform well – another danger point.
Finally the first anniversary of her becoming leader, on November 2 this year. That’s the first moment that MPs can submit letters to the newish 1922 chairman Bob Blackman.
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It takes more than it used to – they changed the rules last year so you now need a third rather than 15% – that’s now a third of 119, so 40. So another moment of peril. This week will determine what matters.
There is a plot. It’s not going away. We just don’t know when it will materialise.
