The Leader of the Opposition vs the next PM

Leading the opposition to the government is not the same as being a government in waiting. Never mind also being the leader of a party both in Parliament and the country.

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So it’s Kemi.

She’s probably the right choice (of the remaining two) on policy terms. I think a deliberate blank page is better than one with “Leave the ECHR’ scrawled across it. But temperamentally, it’s more complex. ‘Will she be able to grow into the job'?’ is probably the biggest question Tories are asking themselves today. But the real question - the real challenge for any Leader of the Opposition - is not whether they can grow into that job but which of the three jobs they are actually taking on are they going to succeed and fail at?

I enjoy a bit of Tory bashing as much as the next Labour partisan. And let’s face it, over the last few years, they have given us an awful lot to bash. But I also believe that to be the kind of partisan that is helpful to the Labour Party I should be one that looks as honestly as I can at the strengths of my opponents as well as their weaknesses. It will only be by accepting and acknowledging these properly that Labour can be realistic about what they are facing.

Speaking of realism, watching the coverage of the result yesterday the main thing that struck me about the Conservative reaction was a comprehensive lack of any sort of facing up to why they lost and what position they find themselves in.

That’s not uncommon when your party has just left government and you have the fresh start of a new leader. In fact, what they reminded me of was me, in 2010, after Ed Miliband was elected leader. Their belief in the role Badenoch is going to play is remarkably similar to what I thought Labour faced 14 years ago. And their belief that a second term is - not a shoe-in, but a probability - sounds like those of us who thought that back then.

But I was wrong and I have had a lot of time to think about why. This isn’t going to be a post about my 14-year-old mistakes, but it will be informed by what I now think I got wrong then. It will be up to the Tories to see if they can learn faster what I - and far more importantly Labour - did not.

So back to those three jobs. I will take each in turn and see how well I think Badenoch will do on each.

Leader of the Opposition

In many ways, Leader of the Opposition is the job Kemi Badenoch was born to. Of all the candidates in the race, she is the one probably best able to give Starmer a headache at the dispatch box and on the media.

The media absolutely love Badenoch.