Saturday, May 03, 2025
Badenoch under pressure after disastrous Tory election performance
Unsurpisingly, the Independent reports that senior Tories are already plotting ways to oust their leader after the party’s disastrous local election results.
The paper says that the prospect of the Tories having their fourth leader in less than four years appears to be on the cards, with the party losing hundreds of council seats across England and being almost wiped out in traditionally strong areas for them:
The Independent has learnt that discussions were already underway before Thursday’s local elections to find a way to remove her.
Now senior Tories have told The Independent that they plan to press Robert Jenrick, who came second to Ms Badenoch, to challenge her.
Among the complaints against Ms Badenoch is a lack of vision and policies, a failure to score hits in Prime Minister’s Questions and a failure to properly confront the rising Reform.
Speculation about Mr Jenrick making a leadership push had been rife before the local elections after a recording of him emerging pronouncing on a plan to do a deal with Reform – a move opposed by Ms Badenoch.
Following that, a letter he sent to all candidates without her name on it also emerged.
One senior Tory told The Independent: “I am messaging Robert [Jenrick] to get his act together and make a bid to be leader. We cannot continue like this.”
“It is now just a matter of timing,” one MP said. “There is no way she can lead us into a general election.”
A former ally of Ms Badenoch’s added: “She just does not have it. We have a choice of replacing her with Robert or a lot of us switching to Reform.”
But an MP who had supported Mr Jenrick last year said: “We cannot just keep changing leaders. We have to give her time, otherwise we will look stupid with voters.”
Also believed to be waiting in the wings is former home secretary and foreign secretary James Cleverly, who has kept a low profile.
Of course everybody was expecting the Tories to lose seats, after all they were defending a 2021 highpoint, but the scale of their defeat is pretty breathtaking. They were lucky that a number of councils had their election cancelled this year, or it could have been even much worse.
As the paper points out, almost as if they want to rub it in, the projected election vote share in areas once strong for the Tories put them in fourth place with 15 per cent behind Reform (30 per cent), Labour (20 per cent) and the Lib Dems on 17 per cent.
The next few months will prove to be interesting.
