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Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch celebrates a major political victory as the party conference begins, following the scrapping of Labour's plans to curb jury trials. Despite a recent election loss, her approval ratings have surged, and new analysis suggests the Conservative party may still have a future under her leadership.
Conservatives claim ‘major victory’ as Tory conference begins after Labour scraps plans to curb jury trials Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch, with her husband Hamish, arriving at the party’s conference in Birmingham on Saturday ahead of it kicking off today.
Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch, with her husband Hamish, arriving at the party’s conference in Birmingham on Saturday ahead of it kicking off today. , and he gave it the subtitle “The last Conservative prime minister? ” When the book was being planned in the early days of Kemi Badenoch’s leadership of the Conservative party, it did look as though the Tories might be finished as a party of government. But now Seldon, and his co-author, aren’t so sure.
Their book concludes: “At the time of writing in July 2026 … the Tory party still needs to engage in a process of deep self-reflection to understand why it failed in government, and tore itself so destructively apart, if it is ever to regain power. But at this point in time we believe it is unlikely that Sunak will have been the last Tory prime minister. ” That is a victory, of sorts, for Badenoch.
For most of last year there were doubts that she would still be leader by the time of the next election. But she gave a successful party conference speech, her response to the budget was much admired, and her personal approval ratings with Tory members and right-leaning voters shot up. After two years as opposition leader, Iain Duncan Smith was booted out.
Two years in, Badenoch’s position as leader is safe and it is even conceivable that she could stay on if the Conservatives were to lose the next election is over, and Alex Norris, the justice secretary, has successfully kept Badenoch off the top of this morning’s news cycle. This is a major victory for everyone who fought to defend trial by jury, and Conservatives led that fight from day one. Labour has been forced to abandon its central attack on jury trials in the crown court.
Labour are restricting juries by the back door, scrapping the right to elect one and dumping those cases on magistrates whose backlog is at a record high. Nearly 81,000 cases are stuck in the crown court, yet there is no commitment to get courts sitting more often, but Labour did find the time to write into law a review of how its reforms treat people of different backgrounds.is interviewed on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.
Norris is being interviewed too. John Belsley, president of the National Conservative Convention, opens the proceedings at the Tory conference in Birmingham.
The session is on the theme of “resisting separatism” and the speakers include Alex Burghart, the deputy leader and shadow Northern Ireland secretary; Mims Davies, shadow Welsh secretary; Harriet Cross, shadow Scottish secretary; Darren Millar, leader of the Welshno longer able to have comments open below the line every day on this blog . If you want to contact me, please email politics.live@theguardian.com. You can use this email to flag up corrections, comments for publication, questions or complaints.
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