Senior Tories rallied around Kemi Badenoch yesterday after a diabolical night for the party which saw them lose hundreds of councillors.
An electoral bloodbath led to the Conservatives being wiped out across swathes of local authorities, losing more than 550 councillors and control of 14 councils.
But the party described their mayoral victory in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough as a ‘significant win’.
Mrs Badenoch last night apologised to Tory councillors who lost their seats as she conceded the public are ‘still not yet ready to trust us’. The Tory leader said she was ‘sincerely sorry’ to the hundreds of ousted local politicians, but pledged that ‘we are going to win those seats back’.
She added: ‘What I saw everywhere I campaigned was that people are fed up with the Labour Government.
‘They were angry about winter fuel payments. They were angry about the jobs tax, but they are still not yet ready to trust us.
‘We have a big job to do to rebuild trust with the public. That’s the job the Conservative Party has given me and I am going to make sure that we get ourselves back to the place where we are seen as the credible alternative to Labour.’
The only sliver of light came in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, where former MP Paul Bristow won the contest with a majority of more than 10,500 over Reform.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch last night apologised to councillors who lost their seats as she conceded the public are ‘still not yet ready to trust us’
It means the Conservatives regain the post, which they took in 2017, with Labour winning four years ago. A Tory spokesman said: ‘On a very difficult night, this is a significant win for the Conservative Party.’
Last night the Leader of the Opposition won support from frontbenchers and senior MPs despite the brutal drubbing in her first electoral test at the helm.
Her former rival Robert Jenrick, the Shadow Justice Secretary, claimed any suggestion the Conservative Party would be performing better if he was leader was ‘complete nonsense’.
Mr Jenrick, whom critics say has not stopped campaigning despite losing the leadership contest last autumn, insisted his boss is doing an ‘excellent job’. ‘Kemi Badenoch is doing a bloody good job in difficult circumstances.
‘It’s extremely challenging being the leader of the opposition immediately after suffering our worst ever election defeat,’ he told the BBC. ‘What we have to do is demonstrate that we have the humility to understand what we got wrong, that we understand the depth of anger and that we will, in time, have the serious answers.’
Tory chairman Nigel Huddleston claimed Mrs Badenoch’s position as party leader was ‘solid’. He added: ‘She’s only been leader for six months and she was out and about right across the country and, I can tell you this, everywhere we went, people wanted to see her more and hear more from her.’
Pressed on his use of the word ‘solid’, Mr Huddleston also told the BBC: ‘I say that in a really positive way. She’s very sensible, she’s very honest, she’s very straightforward. She doesn’t go around telling people what they want to hear. That’s the easy route in politics.’ Another shadow minister told the Mail that there is ‘very little [going on] in terms of plotting’, adding: ‘There are no active moves against the leadership at the moment – not everyone is happy about where we are, but people are maybe playing a game of wait and see.’
A fellow shadow cabinet member claimed the results were ‘a hangover’ from the general election, rather than ‘a Kemi thing’. They said: ‘I don’t think if someone else had been leader it would be any different.’
The Conservative Party lost more than 550 councillors and control of 14 councils
Robert Jenrick claimed any suggestion the Conservative Party would be performing better if he was leader was ‘complete nonsense’
Nigel Farage and Reform UK won huge swathes of council seats from the Tories and Labour
Another senior Conservative said Mrs Badenoch has been ‘getting better in the last few weeks’, adding: ‘It has been a long time coming but actually it has come.’
In Mrs Badenoch’s first electoral test as leader, the Tories lost 581 councillors, with Reform, on the other hand, gaining 635.
The Conservatives also lost control of 14 councils, with Reform now in a majority in nine, while ten are under no overall control. The Tory leader had warned the local elections would be tough, as most seats were last contested in spring 2021 when Boris Johnson’s government was boosted by the initial Covid-19 vaccine rollout.
Nigel Farage said Reform had ‘wiped out’ the Tories, and claimed the election results mark ‘the end of two-party politics’ and the ‘beginning of the end of the Conservative Party’.
