Kemi Badenoch’s uphill battle to convince voters

James Crouch examines Kemi Badenoch’s early days as Conservative leader and the hurdles she faces in becoming a credible future prime minister

It was just over a fortnight ago that Conservative voters went to bed expecting their new leader to be Robert Jenrick, and they woke up to Conservative members having chosen Kemi Badenoch. While the beginning of her tenure as leader has been lukewarm at best — could be worse, but definitely could be better — she needs to make herself look like a potential resident of No 10 Downing Street to have a chance of kicking Labour out at the next election.

In the first Opinium poll since Kemi Badenoch took over as leader of the Conservative Party, 20% of the public approve of the job she is doing as party leader, while 25% disapprove, giving her a net approval rating of -5. This means Badenoch starts her time in office in net negative territory, which is not an ideal scenario.

This is a worse start than her Conservative predecessors Rishi Sunak (+8), her former boss Boris Johnson (-3), and the current Prime Minister Keir Starmer (+16) on their first approval ratings when they took their positions as party leaders. At least she beats Liz Truss, who started on -9. Perhaps the only other difference to flag is that all of her Conservative predecessors started as prime minister so had a far higher level of awareness, but that probably underscores the challenge she faces when she is already in negative territory – people will need to like her as they get to know her, and that’s far from easy in politics.

Another problem she faced straight away is that her election was completely overshadowed by the US presidential election and the re-election of Donald Trump. This is by far the single biggest news story according to the public, and there really has been very little in British politics with a comparable profile recently — even including the arrival of a new Leader of the Opposition. It’s one of the reasons why more than half of people didn’t really have an opinion either way about Badenoch.

Now, Kemi Badenoch is not devoid of strengths. In fact, her straight-talking approach is already something voters have noticed. We regularly test how the largest party leaders are perceived across 14 different metrics. The British public gives Kemi Badenoch reasonably positive net scores on “sticks to her principles” (+9), being “brave” (+8), and being “decisive” (+7). Essentially, she already is perceived to be a conviction politician.

These perceptions, however, are still somewhat nascent. Fewer than 3 in 10 have positive opinions of her on these three key metrics. Which brings us to the negatives. The single biggest scores are detractions. Namely, just over a third (34%) think Badenoch doesn’t have similar views to them. Yes, she might have convictions, but there’s no guarantee the public shares those convictions.

But above all, a major area she will want to improve is that she is not yet seen as prime ministerial. Now, this is usually true of a new opposition leader, and she has time, but it is a key indicator to track. A third (32%) think she doesn’t look like a prime minister in waiting, while only a fifth (20%) think she does.

Which brings us right back to the approval numbers. In her first week, she massively outstrips Keir Starmer on net approval. While Kemi Badenoch is on -5, the prime minister remains in deeply negative territory on -24. However, on our other regular tracker question, where we ask voters to choose between the two, the public thinks Starmer is the best option to be prime minister by 12 points (28% for Starmer vs 16% for Badenoch). The low profile of her first few weeks also doesn’t help.

Until the new Conservative leader can be a conviction politician who genuinely looks ready to take the reins of government, no matter how unpopular Keir Starmer is, the public will opt for the devil they know.