‘We can’t change our leader again’: Tories despair at Badenoch’s poor PMQs performances | Kemi Badenoch

We’re back to early 00s politics where the Tories have elected a new lame duck leader like Iain Duncan Smith, and our politics is being driven further to the right by Nigel Farage like in the 00s.

They can and they should. I’m a swing voter and could not vote for her. The way she debates is so amateur. She’s another Truss waiting to happen.

I don’t understand why they chose her with some of the foot in her mouth moments she had prior to winning the leadership campaign. What were they expecting?

When a leader is incompetent, and you have the ability to change that leader, then you go ahead and change that leader.

In the leadership debates before Truss won, she came across quite well. I don’t like her politics but she seemed articulate, intelligent and straight talking.

Since then, it’s like it’s all gone to her head and now she seems like an arrogant sixth former who thinks they’re the smartest person in the room despite regularly proving they’re not.

The likes of the Telegraph keep pretending she “embarrasses” Starmer at PMQs, but every time she gives him an easy ride through her inability to keep her foot out of her mouth.

They are really feeling the effects of gutting their party due to brexit. They have run out of decent candidates since about Boris/Truss and just never got anyone good in.

Cameron and May were toads but lets be honest, there was at least some aspects of competence.

Bad Enoch was never going to lead the Tories into the next General Election. She was only ever a stop gap while the Conservative Party regroups and decides what it is – centre-right one-nation Tories, or far-right neo-fascists like Reform UK.

The Tory party just needs to start again. Go away, have a big clear out. Look at what policies they actually want to campaign on, how they are different from labour and crucially what they AGREE with labour on and then form an opposition that is actually working for our country.

The current tactic just seems to be, read the daily mail the evening before, see what they are saying and then just base everything on that. It’s ridiculous. I’m no Tory, but having a realistic right wing opinion can be a good thing.

Well if they want a chance at next election they’ll have to.

She’s thick as shit. There’s no other way round it, how many times has she tried to blame starmer for something that was actually due to the government she was a part of?

As bad as Badenoch is, I wouldn’t actually say this is specifically an issue with her, they’d have this issue with any leader.

Fact is, the Tories have just disproved their entire party’s political ideology by implementing it exactly how they wanted and it being *utterly shit*. Being in power for a whole 14 years has just made this fact completely unavoidable in the light of day.

Neoliberalism simply has nothing left to offer. All the sellable state assets are basically gone, public services have been outsourced and stripped bare, the party donors have had their fun with the corruption and nepotism, wealth inequality is beyond any sense, life expectancy even went down… the gig is up.

Tories will continue to see the political world through the same lens that had them make the last 14 years of horrible decisions. They would never actually do some self reflection to come to terms with *why* and *how* their ideas are shit.

They’ll just continue to be politically useless, spouting “solutions” that never worked, that were just a vehicle for an ideology that only cares about shovelling more and more money to the wealthiest in society, all while the country around them crumbles.

People can’t be balmed for swinging towards Reform when the status quo is more of the same old

Equally, Reform can’t be blamed for capitalising on the things people are declaring they’re annoyed with and feel the current two main parties are being tone deaf on

Tories are likely going to be kicked into the dust by Reform, and if Labour end their their first term in power, having not fixed some of the important issues going on and/or alienated voters further than some already feel, it is entirely possible Reform could make significant gains at the next election

We’re already seeing in local/council elections recently that Reform is capable of winning if not securing an absolute solid second place in the voting

Calling for Starmer to resign – while he was nowhere near being in danger of that – in like her second ever PMQs was such a bizarre move. That’s a line you save for when the writing’s on the wall, otherwise you completely undermine yourself when it doesn’t happen.

She’s kept it at that level since, too. I can only imagine she or someone else has had the idea that “intensity” is what’s needed, but all that’s happened is she’s looked more and more deranged while Starmer becomes more and more confident in batting her away.

I think my favourite thing of all though is that she deployed “he has to read from a script” in her very first PMQs… against a seasoned barrister… while clearly reading from a script herself.

I almost feel sorry for her when I see Starmer repeatedly reminding her of that after delivering a calm unscripted response, but then she stands up and reads off the next line even when it doesn’t even make sense anymore.

Absolutely zero political instinct.

I can’t see where they go from here.

The membership clearly wants someone quite right wing but there’s issues with that.

The Tories are trying to out Farage, Farage with the right wing vote but won’t win. He’s pretty much got that area of politics covered and his donors will make sure of that.

They can’t claim they’re better at government after the last 14 years of absolute shambles. Austerity and Brexit under Cameron, May nearly losing to Corbyn and being propped up by the DUP. The era of Johnson, Truss and Sunak in one parliament. Crap budgets and endless controversies.

Labour and Lib Dem’s have sucked up the moderate votes from them. I can’t see them going back to the Tories in huge numbers. Cleverly may have been the better option than Jenrick and Badenoch.

Starmer has a huge majority and isn’t going anywhere unless something huge happens.

The only thing the Tories have in their favour is they know how to campaign and have the structure and grassroots activists with years of experience. It’s pointless changing leaders again but she’s not exactly uniting the party with her leadership qualities.

It shouldn’t worry them too much. People have already lost count of how many completely useless Tory leaders there have been in the last decade, so adding another one to the pile will barely register.

Perhaps they should be more worried about not having anybody left in the party that can save it from going extinct.