Kemi Badenoch has not been nearly candid enough about those 14 years of Tory failure. Share Topics Politics UK Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. As a Conservative donor, I speak regularly with senior Tory figures, and I keep hearing the same optimistic lines about the party’s awful standing in the polls. ‘Kemi’s net favourability is improving’, they say. ‘She’s more popular than Nigel Farage’, they insist. Both are arguably true. Yet both miss the point.