Does Kemi Badenoch have a plan?

We are nearing the 50th anniversary, next month, of Margaret Thatcher becoming leader of the Conservative party. Only one other woman has ever become leader while the party was in opposition, and that is Kemi Badenoch. Mrs Badenoch is well aware of the strategy her legendary predecessor pursued between becoming leader of the opposition in 1975 and prime minister in 1979, and is sensibly emulating it: a willingness to include rivals in her shadow administration, and to take her time setting out policies (there is, after all, unlikely to be an election before the spring of 2028, by when anything could happen); but to precede the announcement of specific policies by statements of principle, to give a broad idea of what the Conservatives stand for.

She has already made clear, in remarks about mass immigration, the failure to inquire into the apparent impunity enjoyed by the south Asian rape gangs of urban post-industrial Britain, Labour’s poor economic management, flat-rate taxation and her outspoken patriotism, that she is not quite like most of her recent predecessors.

However, things are not as in 1975, and she has a far harder task than Mrs Thatcher did. Her predecessor inherited around 275 Conservative MPs in a House of Commons of 635; Mrs Badenoch has just 121 out of 650. This leaves her with very limited human resources with which to conduct her party’s campaign over the next three or four years. Also, since 1975 her party has acquired an addiction to what might best be called the executive fire: when leaders do badly there are seldom second chances, and they are either shown the writing on the wall and resign swiftly (David Cameron and Rishi Sunak), or are dragged out kicking and screaming after trying to defy gravity (Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss).