Badenoch’s -17: A Quiet Tory Recovery Beneath the Reform UK Headlines

Kemi Badenoch‘s latest net favourability score of -17 is, by any reasonable historical comparison, a remarkable achievement: it is the highest recorded by a Conservative leader in over five years, eclipsing the figures registered by every leader the party has had since Theresa May’s pre-2018 standings. Buried beneath the Reform UK headlines and the Labour leadership question, a quieter story is unfolding — a slow but discernible recovery of Conservative political credibility, with significant implications for the British relationship with the European Union.

The figures in context

Badenoch’s -17 sits against a backdrop of historically grim Conservative numbers. Liz Truss left office with a personal favourability deep into negative double digits. Rishi Sunak, despite a presentationally accomplished tenure, never approached parity in YouGov tracking. The current Tory leader’s standing reflects not enthusiasm but rather an absence of the active hostility that characterised public perceptions of the party throughout much of 2022 and 2023. In a polarised political environment, that absence is itself a form of recovery.

What the recovery does — and does not — represent

The improvement should not be mistaken for an electoral turnaround. The Conservatives lost the May 2026 local elections decisively to Reform UK, ending the cycle with fewer councillors than at any point in the party’s modern history. The recovery in Badenoch’s personal numbers reflects, instead, a slow rebuilding of Conservative credibility on specific issues — economic competence, broadly understood public-sector reform, and a less defensive posture on the cultural and identity questions that have shaped recent British politics.

The Conservative EU posture

Where Badenoch’s leadership has perhaps been most strategically distinctive is in its handling of UK-EU relations. Unlike the Boris Johnson and Truss governments, the current Conservative opposition has avoided the most confrontational rhetorical posture towards Brussels. Unlike Labour, which has pursued a „reset” agenda focused on selective regulatory alignment and sectoral cooperation, the Conservatives have positioned themselves as defenders of post-Brexit divergence in specific areas — financial services, AI regulation, and certain aspects of trade policy — while accepting the broad architecture of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement.

The Windsor Framework dimension

The Windsor Framework on Northern Ireland trade remains the most visible inheritance of the previous Conservative government’s EU policy. Badenoch’s team has been careful not to reopen the Framework, recognising both its political fragility and the genuine practical benefits it has delivered to Northern Ireland businesses. That restraint, while frustrating to some on the Conservative right, has helped to depoliticise an issue that consumed political capital for much of the 2019-2024 parliament.

The Reform UK challenge to the Tory EU posture

Reform UK’s positioning on Europe has been considerably more confrontational. The party has called for further renegotiation of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, raised the prospect of leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, and pressed for the abolition of various forms of regulatory alignment that the Windsor Framework preserves. The pressure this exerts on the Conservatives is electoral as much as substantive — competing for voters who view post-Brexit policy as unfinished business, while not alienating the centrist Conservative base that has accepted the current settlement.

Labour’s contrasting strategy

Labour’s EU strategy, by contrast, has emphasised pragmatic re-engagement: a security and defence partnership, easier mobility for young people, mutual recognition of certain professional qualifications, and selective alignment with EU sanitary and phytosanitary standards. The approach has yielded incremental progress without provoking the kind of domestic political backlash that characterised the 2016-2020 period. Whether the strategy will be politically sustainable as Reform UK continues to challenge the post-Brexit settlement from the opposite direction is, however, an open question.

The Conservative path forward

For Badenoch personally, the next 12 months will be defined by two questions. First, whether the slow recovery in personal favourability can be converted into renewed competitiveness in key parliamentary constituencies — particularly in the South of England, where the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK are competing for the seats the Conservatives most need to recover. Second, whether the Conservative position on Europe can be articulated coherently in an environment where both Labour and Reform UK are pulling the debate in opposite directions.

The structural test

The deeper test, beyond personal favourability, is whether the Conservative Party can rebuild a coherent identity in a political environment in which the two-party assumptions of the past century are visibly fraying. Badenoch’s -17 is a meaningful improvement on her predecessors, but it is still a substantial negative number. The Conservative recovery, in other words, is real but partial — and its eventual political payoff will depend on factors well beyond the leader’s personal standing, including the trajectory of Reform UK, the shape of the next election campaign, and the durability of the current UK-EU equilibrium.