Just 11% of Britons believe the Conservatives are ready for government, though just 21% think it’s likely that the Tories will no longer be a major force in 10 years’ time
It has been a difficult year for the Conservatives, with the party now in a worse place than after their record election defeat last year and showing few signs of recovering. They have sat clearly in third place in voting intention polls for most of the year, with YouGov’s latest MRP suggesting they would win just 45 seats were an election held tomorrow, reducing them to being the fourth-largest party in parliament.
This is the backdrop of Kemi Badenoch’s first Conservative conference as party leader. While she intends to use the occasion to show how she can save the Tories, some internal critics are running a countdown clock until 2 November, the day she can be challenged for the leadership.
And criticism of her leadership is far from just internal. Only 20% of the public believe Badenoch has done well as Conservative leader so far, while nearly half (45%) think she has done badly as leader. Even among Conservative voters, just half (49%) give her leadership favourable reviews, with 33% feeling she’s been a bad leader of the party.
Badenoch has convinced even fewer people that she’s a prime minister in waiting, a metric often seen as key for successful opposition leaders (40% of the public saw Starmer as prime ministerial before the last election). At present, just 11% of Britons, including only 22% of Conservatives, are able to imagine Kemi as the inhabitant of Number 10.
This is not, though, just a problem with Badenoch herself. At present, just 11% of the public believe the Conservatives, who have long viewed themselves as the ‘natural party of government’, are ready for a return to power, while 70% of Britons say they are not.
Even among Conservative voters, just a third (32%) think the party are ready for government, while half (49%) feel the party is yet to reach this stage. No more than 9% of voters for any other major party see the Conservatives as fit for office.
Do Britons think the Conservatives are ‘over’?
Despite not feeling that the Tories are ready for a return to government, Britons don’t particularly agree with recent Conservative to Reform UK defector Danny Kruger’s view that the Tories are “over as a national party” and that it is “too late” to save the party under a new leader.
Nearly half of Britons (45%) believe it’s likely that the Conservatives will still be a major party with good chances of winning general elections in a decade’s time, more than the 35% who feel this is unlikely, while just 21% of the public think it’s likely the Tories will no longer be a major party in ten years’ time, something 58% of Britons see as unlikely.
Reform UK voters are the most sceptical of the Tories’ ability to persist, though even then they tend to think it’s unlikely the Tories will no longer be a major force in British politics in a decade by 47% to 34%.
Among Conservative voters, 69% believe it’s likely the party will still have a good chance of winning elections in a ten years’ time, although 22% see this as unlikely. Just 17% think it’s likely that the Conservatives will no longer be a major party by 2035.
In which areas do Britons trust the Conservatives?
Key to rebuilding the Conservatives as an election-winning force will likely be focussing on the areas where the public most trust the party and addressing those where they’re less trusted.
At present, most Britons do not trust the Tories on any of the 18 areas polled. Nonetheless, there are three issues – supporting businesses, defence and representing the UK abroad – where they score relatively better, with more than three in ten Britons (32-36%) trusting them at least a fair amount, even if 52-58% do not.
Around a quarter of Britons (25-26%) also trust the Conservatives to manage the economy and on taxation, though this is against two thirds of the public (66-67%) having little to no trust in the party in these areas.
Immigration, keeping promises, and poverty sit at the other end of the scale, with just one in seven Britons (14-15%) trusting the Tories at least a fair amount on these topics, compared to 76-78% holding little to no trust in the party here.
The current lack of trust in the Conservatives is such that many Conservative voters themselves don’t trust the party in key areas. This is most notable on immigration, where the party has a negative net trust score of -14 among 2024 Conservatives, a significant contrast from the clear positive +35 for Reform UK on the issue among Tory voters.
Conservative voters are also fairly divided on trusting the party when it comes to issues like the NHS (+7), the environment (+5), housing (+1), poverty (-6) and keeping its promises (-7). They do, however, have high levels of trust in the party on representing the UK abroad (+48), defence (+46), supporting businesses (+45) and managing the economy (+41).
The Tories do not have a positive trust score in any area among voters for other parties, though Reform UK voters have less negativity towards the party on protecting minorities (-1), supporting businesses (-8) and on defence (-8). Defence and supporting businesses are also the two areas with the least bad net trust scores for the Tories among Labour, Lib Dem and Green voters.
The greatest difference in trusting the Conservatives between Conservative and Reform UK voters are managing the economy, ‘representing people like me’, and forming an effective government, where net trust scores are 76-78 points lower among Reform UK voters.
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Photo: Getty
