Kemi Badenoch recalls being confronted by a former Tory voter in Essex who said they no longer recognise what the Conservative Party stands for.
Badenoch's majority was cut by about 25,000, and the Conservative party as a whole suffered its worst defeat in parliamentary history, even though she managed to keep her seat.
Her supporters claim that she has been considering ways to reinterpret the Conservative party's values and end a turbulent period in the party's history that has destroyed its reputation ever since.
The Tory leader believes she did that this week when the party convened for its annual conference in Manchester. Her issue is that it won't make a difference.
Badenoch's arrival in Manchester over the weekend came amid dire warnings that the party, which was losing support to Reform UK and was only at 16% in the polls, was on the verge of going extinct.
Political analysts reported that in focus groups across the country, barely anyone was able to name a single thing she had said or done since becoming leader.
“The biggest risk for the Tories is that they are drifting into irrelevance,”
one said.
On the social media site X, a dissatisfied Tory MP has even put up a countdown clock showing how many days remain until party rules let opponents to submit a challenge. Her detractors will have the opportunity to send letters to start a contest on November 2, the first anniversary of her rule.
In the wings are competitors. Robert Jenrick is the most prominent of them and hasn't hidden his intentions very well. According to a shadow cabinet colleague, "he reeks of naked ambition."
“It’s the sunk cost fallacy: he’s poured so much into it he can’t give up now.”
The main conference hall and ancillary events were crowded as the shadow justice secretary, who lost to Badenoch in last year's leadership battle, presented his Reform-lite political philosophy to the devoted Tory supporters.
As he attended fringe events and parties, he seemed to have learnt from the Andy Burnham show at the Labour conference in Liverpool last week. He took a much more subdued approach, complimenting Badenoch's leadership and claiming to be "right behind" her.
Similar to Burnham, Jenrick came away from the conference a smaller person after the Guardian exposed his grievance over "not seeing another white face" in a section of Birmingham, which sparked charges of toxic nationalism.
Badenoch's most dangerous moment will occur following the May local elections, when the Conservatives will lose badly in councils throughout England as well as in Wales and Scotland. Those who criticize her seem to agree that it would be ineffective to try to remove her before then.
“Kemi will survive until May at least,”
one former government adviser attending the conference said. “People just aren’t interested in moving against her sooner. There is a lot of apathy.”
At a fringe event on Sunday, polling guru Sir John Curtice questioned the wisdom of the Tories’ endless focus on migration:
“The question I would pose to you is, does it necessarily make sense to try to out-Reform Reform?”
But within 24 hours the conference had pivoted to the economy, which polls suggest is the party’s strongest card in a weak hand.
“We had to tackle issues like the ECHR [European convention on human rights] early on, to give us the space to talk about what we wanted to,”
one shadow cabinet minister said.
Senior Tories believe they can beat Reform on the economy, and that Nigel Farage’s pitch to the left on issues such as welfare and state aid are his Achilles heel.
“Reform want to get back to the days of nationalisation and state control. They are marching to the left. Be in no doubt. They are the party of more spending and more debt,”
shadow chancellor Mel Stride told delegates.
Some Tories are sceptical that the strategy will be effective, as voters won’t buy the Reform leader as anything other than a Thatcherite. They also fear the party has a long way to go to restore its reputation for fiscal prudence after the damage done by Liz Truss’s mini-budget.
In the conference bars, MPs and members openly debated whether the party had done enough to express contrition for the chaos unleashed on the country in the final years of the Tories’ time in power.
What local issues in North West Essex drove voters away from the Conservatives?
Voters have worried that cutbacks will impact vital public services, like healthcare and education and concern should access and quality decline.
We have a quick local frustration with new housing projects, including the loss of green space and rapid population increase without infrastructure improvements.
Increasing costs of living and broader economic insecurity have pushed away some traditional Conservative voters, especially given the continuation of the talk about austerity. Complaints about poor roads, traffic congestion, and not enough public transportation are all local issues noted.