Left-of-centre voters need to consider voting for Kemi Badenoch's Tories to stop Reform

For much of last year, the UK party leader in that position was Kemi Badenoch. Having been elected by the Conservative membership in autumn of 2024, there were continual criticisms that she had failed to make an impact on the public. Polls showed the Conservatives in the doldrums, trailing behind Reform and Labour, and in some cases even scrapping with the Lib Dems for third.

In the background, supporters of Badenoch’s one-time leadership rival, the hyperactive Shadow Home Secretary Robert Jenrick, were blamed for briefing the media against her. There seemed to be a broad consensus in the political world that there was little prospect of her leading the Conservatives into the next general election.

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Badenoch to meet Sandie Peggie

This week the Conservative leader is back in Scotland, with her prospects transformed. The circus has moved on, and it’s no longer Badenoch who is the leader tipped for an early defenestration. That unhappy designation has now been inherited by Keir Starmer, who many even in Labour think cannot now possibly lead the party into an election, given his dire poll ratings.

Whilst here, Badenoch is expected to meet my constituent Sandie Peggie, the Fife nurse who has become a hero for taking the fight to her employers NHS Fife in defence of the rights of women and girls to single-sex spaces. It’s a meeting which is likely to generate widespread coverage, and is typical of the approach being taken by a Conservative leader who just in the last few months has developed a knack of capturing the zeitgeist and identifying with popular causes.

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The job of leader of the Opposition in the early years of a new parliament is not to develop a fully worked out alternative policy platform to the government. Instead it is to fight what is effectively a guerrilla campaign, being seen to be on the side of the public by latching on to popular causes.

Whether it is meeting Peggie and speaking out against trans ideology, defending farmers facing inheritance tax changes, or, just last week, forcing a Labour U-turn on business-rate rises affecting pubs and hospitality businesses, Badenoch has developed the knack of identifying causes where Labour are seen to be weak, and on the wrong side of public opinion. She was at it again recently, backing a social media ban for the under-16s whilst the government drags its feet.

Humiliation of Chancellor

All this activity has been backed by much-improved performances in the Commons. Whether in her robust response to the Budget in November, where she humiliated Chancellor Rachel Reeves, or in her weekly exchanges with Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions, this is an opposition leader who’s clearly enjoying a role she has grown into, developing increasing confidence as she does.

The Badenoch revival is enthusing parliamentarians both at Westminster and at Holyrood, and inspiring party members and workers. Everyone knows that being the leader of the Opposition is the hardest job in British politics, but Badenoch is demonstrating how to make a success of it.

All this hasn’t gone unnoticed by the public. Badenoch’s own personal ratings have improved considerably, as indeed have the party’s standings. From a situation where in most of 2025 the Conservatives were lagging in the polls well behind Labour in a poor third place, polls are showing a marked improvement.

The average of polls demonstrates that the Conservatives are now in second place, closing the gap with Reform, whilst Labour have dropped back. Some polls even suggest that the Greens under Zack Polanski have overtaken Labour and pushed them into fourth, indicating that there are those on the left of politics who are now so disillusioned with Starmer that they find themselves more at home with a hard-left Green alternative.

Given Starmer’s personal difficulties, both with his party and the public, and the deep-seated challenges facing the country which his government seems unable to get to grips with, it is hard to see how Labour can recover their position in time for a general election in three years’ time.

Conservatives vs Reform

That sets up the intriguing possibility that the election in 2029 – or earlier – will be a head-to-head contest between the Conservatives under Kemi Badenoch and Reform under Nigel Farage. It would pit the moderate centre-right against the populists of Reform.

Such a scenario is not as unlikely as it may appear. We have seen something similar in Germany, where the two principal parties are now the Conservative CDU-CSU coalition and the far-right AFD. The consequence of this is that many moderate centrist Germans, who would not previously have considered themselves Conservative supporters, will now back the CDU/CSU because of their loathing of the AFD.

It is not inconceivable that something similar could happen here, particularly with our first-past-the-post voting system. Left-of-centre voters in a constituency being contested by both Conservatives and Reform are far more likely to vote tactically for a Conservative candidate to help avoid the possibility of Farage becoming Prime Minister.

Just as in the successive French presidential elections, Emmanuel Macron benefitted from being in the run-off against Marine Le Pen from the National Rally, so Kemi Badenoch could find her route to Number 10 Downing Street propelled by voters from the centre and centre-left.

That prospect is still some distance in the future, but for now she will be warmly welcomed by Scottish Conservatives as we look forward to our own electoral contest in just four months’ time.

Murdo Fraser is a Scottish Conservative MSP for Mid-Scotland and Fife