As Kemi Badenoch makes last-minute preparations for her first party conference as Conservative leader, some Tory members are watching a clock of a different sort: an online countdown of the days left until party rules allow rivals to mount a challenge against her.
So steep has been the Conservative party’s slump under Badenoch’s watch, as the populist Reform UK marches ahead in the polls, that few in the party even pretend to be offended by this prank.
“It is astonishing how much we’ve fallen in just a year,” says one senior Tory official, who shared the existence of the countdown. “What I’d worry about if I was Kemi is that the discontent comes from all quarters.”
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