Badenoch wins! If that’s what you can call becoming the leader of a party that just received its worst ever performance at a general election. And winning the internal Conservative Party leadership election with the lowest ever vote share, on the lowest ever percentage turnout. Only 34.7% of her fellow Tory MPs backed her in the final MPs ballot.
How does the public view her? Pollster YouGov gave her a net favourability score of -33, days before the result. Only 19% of those polled said they even cared who wins.
She tried to bring all her competitors into the shadow cabinet. A tactic a whole host of Tory prime ministers used to try to hold together a party tearing itself apart. It won’t work. Two of them said no!
Don’t expect a change of the Tory tune. Through the leadership campaign Badenoch has opposed the minimum wage, called statutory maternity pay “excessive”, and made the outrageous claim that autistic people have “economic privileges and protections”.
The Tories were smashed in the general election – hated for their attacks on the working class and our services. But that doesn’t mean they are about to disappear completely. All the more urgent to build the socialist opposition to Starmer’s war and austerity agenda, and for the trade unions to take steps towards building a new mass workers’ party.
