The Assisted Death of the Conservative Party

Kemi Badenoch’s increasingly poor PMQs appearances are only deepening the mortal threat facing her party's future

They say nothing is certain in life, aside from death and taxes.

But while expensive accountants may help you to avoid the latter, everything Kemi Badenoch has done as leader of the Conservative party seems designed to increase her party’s chances of meeting the former.

Nowhere has this been clearer than during her weekly appearances at Prime Minister's Questions.

For any leader of the opposition, PMQs is pretty much the only moment during the political week when anyone outside of Westminster even notices that you exist.

This is something that was well understood by Badenoch’s predecessors.

As George Osborne, who used to help prepare David Cameron for PMQs as opposition leader, once recalled: “If you fail [at PMQs], the Leader of the Opposition doesn’t really have many other opportunities during the week to correct that… Prime Minister’s can quickly recover, whereas Leaders of the Opposition live with the defeat for many more days.”

After several weeks of failing to get the better of Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions, Badenoch looks likely to have plenty more days to live with such defeats.