𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Kemi Badenoch faces the most important 12 months in her political life.

The Conservative leader helped bring the Starmer-Reeves era to a crashing end. Now she must stop Andy Burnham leading a Labour renaissance. Millions of voters are forming their first impression of the former Mayor of Greater Manchester; it is Mrs Badenoch’s challenge to ensure they will vote against him and his party the first chance they get.

Here are three key challenges for Mrs Badenoch in the year ahead.

Mrs Badenoch has enjoyed a personal renaissance in the past year. But can she transform her party’s ratings?

A year ago, just 19% of Britons saw her favourably. Now one in three sees her this way, with YouGov saying her “net favourability score of -11 is her highest to date”.

It was one thing to pummel Sir Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions as he reeled from the fallout of the winter fuel fiasco, the shock hike in National Insurance contributions, the family farm tax raid and the Mandelson scandal. Now she will face an experienced and affable northern PM who delights in public performance.

Mr Burnham has a net favourability rating of +3. Dragging that into negative territory will be a priority for Mrs Badenoch.

Labour will hope the sight of a PM for an Essex seat attacking a northern PM and Chancellor will cause voters in their heartland constituencies to circle the wagons. The Tory leader needs to find a way of reaching out to voters in the Red Wall and convincing them to choose the Conservatives over Labour or Reform UK.

For all the talk of the “Kemi bounce”, the Tories’ ratings remain miserable. YouGov put the Conservatives in third place (20%), behind Labour (21%) and Reform (23%). If she can lead the party to first place by the end of the year then the party will have real hopes of taking power in 2029 (after all, Labour won 412 constituencies with a mere 34% of the vote); if the Tories are still behind their rivals, then ambitious Tories who have studied the Burnham playbook will suggest the party needs someone else to take them into the election.

The Conservatives chose not to stand against Nigel Farage in Clacton in his self-triggered by-election. If there is a second by-election the pressure on Mrs Badenoch to bring Mr Farage’s days as an MP to an end will be intense.

A crucial test is coming in the May elections to councils and mayoralties. New unitary authorities will have their first contests and she must stop this being a blaze of glory for Reform.

If people in every part of the country who are fed up with Labour choose to back Reform, worries will deepen that the Conservatives have lost their national reach. But a bad night for Reform will fuel the Tory narrative that Mr Farage’s party has a slow puncture and that the days when it had a double-digit lead over its rivals are gone for good.

Likewise, the locals will be the first major test of Mr Burnham’s popularity. A disastrous set of results would plunge Labour into a post-regicide crisis with different factions asking why they installed the gregarious former mayor as PM.

Below the radar, Mrs Badenoch needs to revive Tory constituency associations where loyal members have watched activists abandon the party for Reform. She needs committed, well-trained, super-resourced pavement warriors who will fight to put her in Downing Street.

The Tories were doomed when Liz Truss’s mini-Budget ignited market turmoil and voters blamed the hikes in interest rates on her policies. The Conservative reputation for stability had been torched by the Brexit wars and now trust in their economic competence was shredded.

Mrs Badenoch needs to win Britons’ trust that she can bring down their cost of living and restore real growth. By turning against net zero policies and British membership of the ECHR, she has made it harder for Right-wingers to justify jumping to Reform, but the election will be won or lost on the economy.

If she wants to win back voters in the growth-hungry north and reclaim the Blue Wall from the Liberal Democrats, she must convince the country she is their best hope for prosperity.

This is daunting challenge but her zeal for the job is not in question and she displays raw talent at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesdays. She does not want to go down in history as one of Britain’s almost-PMs and she knows there is not a moment to lose.