'Why Kemi Badenoch is the only Conservative who can unite the right' - Steven Stanbury

I joined the Federation of Conservative Students (FCS) in the mid-eighties, attracted by a radical, optimistic, libertarian movement winning the battle of ideas on campus.

As an ardent Thatcherite, I helped set up Conservate Way Forward (CWF) and stood for Parliament as a Tory candidate. But there comes a point when you realise that on every single policy, it is another political party, not the Conservatives, who reflects your values.

So, in 2014 I joined UKIP, became its Party Director, and ran the UKIP London HQ, helping UKIP win 14 per cent of the national vote, more than the Lib Dems and the Greens combined.

With Brexit won in 2016, and UKIP having fulfilled its core objective, I re-joined the Conservative Party, hoping that the Tories had learnt the lesson that you can’t take your right-wing base for granted.

Sadly, I was wrong.

My journey, and dilemma, is shared by millions of voters, and thousands of activists.

Party does not matter, what matters is values, ideas and principles. But the right is not a movement of protest, being in power matters as well, we care too much about our country to watch from the sidelines as Labour now systematically destroys all that we hold dear.

So, the right needs to win the next election.

But now the right is split, the egregious and repetitive Tory betrayal of conservative values has left a vacuum, now filled by a resurgent, ambitious, and energised Reform UK.

And let’s be clear, Reform is not going to disappear anytime soon, and any Tory recovery strategy that assumes that Reform will somehow melt away is delusional.

The Conservative recovery, essential for a right-wing victory in 2029, needs to win back many Reform voters, but also our strategy needs to not just accept, but plan for and capitalise on a scenario where Reform is still a powerful electoral force – working with the Conservatives to deliver a right-wing parliamentary majority – not working against the Tories to let Labour back in.

So, this brings us to Conservative Party leadership election, and the answer to these three questions:

1. Which candidate truly understands the scale and depth of the Tory betrayal?
2. Who genuinely shares the values of the millions who have deserted the Conservative Party?
3. And who has the intellect to create a pathway to victory that both rebuilds the Tory brand but understands that victory in 2029 will mean uniting the fractured right-wing coalition, utilising Reform UK, not ignoring it.

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By some margin, Kemi Badenoch is the candidate best suited to the task ahead.

She alone genuinely recognises the scale of the betrayal, the anger and broken trust of millions of voters who feel they have been lied to by previous Conservative governments.

Kemi is not a centrist, careerist politician who calculates that she needs to temporarily sound right wing to win a Tory leadership contest, she is the only authentic candidate who has consistently, reliably and skilfully articulated and acted upon her right-wing values throughout her political career, not just in the months ahead of this leadership election.

As for the third question, uniting the fractured right-wing coalition and electing more right wing than left wing MPs in 2029, Kemi does not need to answer that question now.

There is time develop that strategy, but Kemi’s intelligence, nuance and ability to think outside the box indicates that she, and she alone, is the Tory leader able to do what it takes to win.