At the Fringe of Memory: A Conservative Conference Haunted by Thatcher and the Future
Walk into the conference hall and you could feel history leaning in. Glass cabinets caught the light and the silhouettes of Margaret Thatcher’s jackets, their shoulders still sharp after four decades. Cardboard cutouts of the “Iron Lady” towered over delegates, while a photo montage stitched together a familiar mythology: resolve, conviction, the era when the Conservative Party believed it had the future sewn up.
“It’s theatre, yes, but it’s theatre that says something,” said a delegate from the Midlands, sipping a lukewarm coffee between speeches. “If you’re staging Thatcher, you’re saying: remember when we set the agenda?”
Yet the exhibit felt less like celebration and more like an elegy. Thatcher is being invoked with affectionate ritual and strategic calculation. The centenary of her birth gives cover for nostalgia. It also reveals a deeper anxiety: how does a party reattach itself to a public that moved on decades ago?
Kemi Badenoch: Thoughtful Conservatism or Strategic Stall?
Kemi Badenoch, who staked her leadership on cautious competence—“I’m an engineer, not a miracle performer,” she told the Telegraph—has spent much of her first year avoiding headline-grabbing panics. Her pitch: careful, slow-cooked policy development rather than the giddy velocity of soundbite politics.
That restraint has frustrated parts of her party. Across the conference floor you could hear it in mutters at the coffee station: why hesitate when others are sprinting? Why let Reform UK take the oxygen?
“We need clarity, and fast,” said an activist from the South West. “People want bold answers on cost of living, houses, crime. Thoughtful is fine, but voters measure results, not deliberation.”
Yet Badenoch has begun to unveil a policy toolkit. Among the more headline-friendly items she floated: abolition of stamp duty for homes in England and Northern Ireland, and, more controversially, a plan to withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Policy on the Edge: ECHR and the Belfast Agreement
Here is where politics meets geopolitics. The ECHR, drafted after the Second World War and coming into force in the early 1950s, underpins human-rights norms across Europe. Its role in the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement is delicate: some strands of the agreement reference the ECHR directly; others do not. That nuance has been seized by the Tory leadership.
Shadow Attorney General David Wolfson was asked to examine the legal seams and reported that a British withdrawal from the ECHR would not necessarily be a dead letter for the Belfast Agreement. But he warned of “significant political difficulties.” Badenoch herself acknowledged the bind: legal pathways may exist, she wrote on social media, but they “pose serious political challenges.”
To voters in Northern Ireland, the issue is more than legal footwork. “The ECHR is a shield for many here,” said Siobhán McKenna, who runs a community centre in Derry. “It’s part of the architecture that keeps the peace visible. Even talk of leaving spooks people.”
Nigel Farage, the figure now occupying much of the right-wing conversation, has already promised to quit the ECHR if given the chance. “The peace agreement wasn’t dependent on the ECHR,” he said recently, brushing aside concerns. Whether that reflects legal reality or political convenience is a debate that will echo across Dublin, Belfast, and Westminster.
A Party Under Pressure: Rivals, Rebels, and Relevance
The Conservative conference this year looked like the mirror image of Labour’s: both parties preoccupied with the same problem—Reform UK. The splintered right has become a gravitational pull, dragging voters away from the traditional centre-right tent and leaving the Tories scrambling for a narrative that feels both modern and authentic.
“This is about more than one policy,” said Dr. Harriet Collins, a political sociologist at a London university. “It’s a story of identity. Parties that fail to refresh their story and speak to new anxieties tend to atrophy. Reform UK is offering a different grammar—simpler, sharper—and that’s resonating.”
Inside the conference rooms, leadership drama flickered at the edges. Robert Jenrick, Shadow Justice Secretary, delivered himself of remarks about a visit to Birmingham that some interpreted as clumsy and tone-deaf. The clip—him saying he “didn’t see another white face” in a particular 90-minute window—rippled through social media and became fodder for critics.
Jenrick’s comments only underscored another tension: the party’s internal fault lines between a modernising, diverse Britain and an older, nostalgic vision. Badenoch has managed to fend off any immediate challenge to her leadership, but the calendar is unforgiving: on 2 November MPs will be allowed to table letters of no-confidence. One year in, the safety net gets thinner.
Numbers Tell a Quiet Story
Polling since Badenoch’s ascension has painted a sober picture. Publicly available MRP-style surveys show the Conservatives trailing Labour by several points—and, more alarmingly for the party’s future, beneath Reform UK in key slices of the electorate. Local and devolved election prospects for the Tories look tough: analysts expect losses in Wales, Scotland, and many English councils next May.
“The metrics are brutal,” said Tom Rivera, a campaign strategist who has worked on both local and national races. “If you’re bleeding support to a competitor on the right, everything becomes defensive. You can either recombine as a governing alternative or you can keep sliding into niche irrelevance.”
Theatrics, Songs, and the Human Pulse
For all the talk of strategy and policy, the human scenes at the conference were vivid and telling. Videos of Badenoch singing and dancing to Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” went viral inside the hall; they showed a leader trying to be both human and galvanising. Delegates shared jokes over sandwiches, old friendships were renewed, and for a few hours, the party felt like a family reunion.
“We’re tired, but we still care,” said an older volunteer who has baked for conferences since the 1990s. “You don’t come back if you’ve given up.”
So What’s Next?
Here is the question that hums under every handshake and policy paper: can a party reconcile its past with a future that looks very different? Thatcher’s mantle offers a direction—decisive, ideological, and clear. But the marketplace of ideas has changed. Across Europe, mainstream parties have been hollowed out by insurgent movements promising simpler fixes to complex problems—from migration to housing affordability to identity politics.
Will the Conservatives re-emerge as a credible governing alternative by the next general election, or will they be compressed into a smaller, more ideological bloc with limited reach? Will the legal and political tangle around the ECHR and the Belfast Agreement become a point of clarity or a festering controversy?
As a reader, what do you think matters most to a party trying to regain relevance: boldness or competence? Nostalgia or renewal? The answer will shape not only the prospects of one party in Britain but also the wider trajectory of Western democracies wrestling with fragmentation and the hunger for new stories.
Watch this space. The glass cabinets will stay put for now, but the story behind them is still being written—one speech, one policy, and one voter at a time.
