Third Of Tory Voters Don't Think New Leader Will Fight Next Election
Kemi Badenoch was announced as the new Leader of the Opposition on Saturday (Alamy)
3 min read
More than a third of 2024 Conservative voters do not expect the new party leader to last until the next general election.
Polling carried out by Opinium a few days before Kemi Badenoch was elected as the new leader of the Conservative Party on Saturday, has shown there is widespread doubt over whether the new Tory leader will last the full course of this parliament.
Badenoch won 53,806 votes from party members to succeed Rishi Sunak as Leader of the Opposition, compared to runner-up Robert Jenrick's 41,388. She is the sixth Conservative leader in less than eight and a half years, after years of infighting and instability.
The Opinium findings, seen by PoliticsHome, showed that 43 per cent of the general public thought it unlikely the new leader will lead the party into the next general election, while 28 per cent thought it likely.
Strikingly, more than a third – 36 per cent – of people who voted Tory on 4 July thought the new leader will not make it to the next election, while 40 per cent thought it likely they will.
The Opinium survey of 2,050 people was carried out between 30-31 October.
While Badenoch won the support of a majority of Tory members to win the party's leadership contest, only around a third Conservative MPs voted for her in their final ballot, while only 20 per cent voted for her in the first round of MP voting.
In the days since Badenoch became leader, chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee Bob Blackman has changed the rules to make it harder to get rid of the party’s leader. The minimum number of letters required to trigger a confidence vote in the leader has been increased from 15 per cent of the parliamentary party to a third. In this Parliament, this will now mean 41 letters would be required to trigger a vote, rather than 19.
On Tuesday, Badenoch finalised her appointments to her first shadow cabinet, giving some of the most high-profile jobs to those who also stood to be leader, in what will likely be seen as an effort to help unify the party after its worst election defeat in history in July.
Mel Stride was appointed as Shadow Chancellor, Priti Patel as Shadow Foreign Secretary, and Jenrick as Shadow Justice Secretary. There were no roles however for Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly, who decided not to make themselves available for shadow roles.
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