The results of the Conservative leadership election don’t just represent a victory for Kemi Badenoch — they represent a victory for Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage.

The prime minister, whose approval ratings have gone through the bottom of the barrel and into the ground, does not have an effective opponent to hold him to account. The leader of Reform UK, meanwhile, does not have a serious ideological competitor.

With an opportunity to change course, the Conservatives have chosen decline.

Granted, Robert Jenrick was far from being the strongest of candidates. He had his pluses. He had done serious work on immigration, and he took some bold and popular positions throughout his campaign. But he lacked charisma, his laser focus on leaving the ECHR limited his popular appeal, and stunts like wearing a “Hamas are terrorists” hoodie enthused about twenty people, all of whom work in SW1.

But if and when it all goes wrong, no Conservative should be able to argue that they were not warned

Yet while Jenrick was not the most inspiring candidate, Kemi Badenoch is considerably worse. The virtues that her backers in politics and the media have been trumpeting are largely fictitious, and her flaws are real and considerable.

Can she win? It’s possible. A lot can happen in four years. But there is no case for optimism.

Firstly, Badenoch is the losers’ favourite. She has celebrated having the support of Conservatives like William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith — Tories who, as Leaders of the Opposition, never gave Tony Blair a troubled dream, never mind a sleepless night. This is like the new Man United manager having the endorsement of David Moyes and Louis Van Gaal.

Badenoch is also a protege of Michael Gove — a man who has done a lot more to damage the Conservative Party than Keir Starmer ever could. With friends like this, how can she represent “renewal”?

Badenoch is gaffe-prone and awkward with the media. Whether or not she is “rude” behind the scenes is not a big concern unless you happen to work for the Conservative Party. We’re not looking for a church youth leader here. But her prickliness with interviewers will make it difficult for her to shape media narratives as Leader of the Opposition. Her rhetorical missteps, meanwhile — seen in her garbled comments over maternity pay, or her unsubstantiated references to Jenrick’s “impropriety” — will make her the story rather than the government. Her new prominence will also make her awkward relationship with the truth more obvious and unavoidable.

Badenoch has built a reputation as the anti-woke candidate — boldly challenging leftist extremism. Actually, as James McSweeney has written in these pages, she is herself responsible for the establishment of EDI legislation. Even on trans issues, where she has made some good decisions, Badenoch has been unreliable. Her legislation for schools, as Liz Truss rightly observed, was bizarrely vague, and she enabled the development of a gratuitous “conversion therapy” ban even as she acknowledged its risks. 

That she uses her race and sex as cudgels against criticism while decrying “identity politics” is at best hypocritical and at worst raises questions about her sincerity. Either way, as Laurie Wastell noted, “it plays into the left’s hands”.

This is all especially damaging for Badenoch. One of the less inherently effective criticisms that have been aimed at her campaign is that it has been light on policy details. Well, she’s running to be Leader of the Opposition. She doesn’t have to release a manifesto. If a politician has the right instincts and principles, the specifics can wait. (Arguably, indeed, the problem with Rishi Sunak was that he was detail-oriented but had rotten instincts.) 

Yet what reason do we have to be optimistic about Badenoch’s broader leadership qualities? Anything? Anyone? Bueller?

In the face of all this, Badenoch’s supporters have indulged themselves with rose-tinted rhetoric. Charles Moore thinks her femaleness and non-whiteness will baffle Keir Starmer — a politician who has seen off Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak without trouble. 

Niall Ferguson, meanwhile, has been implying that Badenoch is some sort of intellectual heavyweight because she references Thomas Sowell and Roger Scruton — great men, of course, and great authors, but inevitable features of any right-wing-curious adolescent’s reading list. To be fair, I doubt that Robert Jenrick reads political and economic theory in his downtime. You don’t have to be an intellectual to be a politician. But the fact that Badenoch’s supporters have to go to such eccentric lengths to justify their optimism is telling.

All this might sound unfair. Should we not give her a chance? Well, she has a chance. For all that we’d like to reign and rule the media, no article in The Critic will stand in the way of that. 

But if and when it all goes wrong, no Conservative should be able to argue that they were not warned. We told you it would happen.