Kemi Badenoch arrives in Manchester under pressure.

Kemi Badenoch will arrive in Manchester on Saturday with the Tories on the crest of a slump.

Polling released on Friday by YouGov made yet more grim reading for the party as its members gather for their annual conference.

Just 11% of voters believe the Conservatives are ready for government, and only 20% think Badenoch has done a good job since being elected the party’s leader last November.

On management of the economy, traditionally the Tories’ strongest suit, barely a quarter of the public trust them.

Even more worryingly for the party, given the existential threat to them posed by the rise of Reform UK, only one in seven voters trust them on immigration.

It’s already clear that the party has a mountain to climb to even be competitive the next time the country goes to the polls in 2028 or 2029.

Badenoch’s remedy appears to be to take the Conservatives further to the right in an attempt to win back voters from Reform.

She has already angered many in her party, including Theresa May, by pledging to scrap the Climate Change Act if she becomes prime minister.

Badenoch is also expected to announce that a Tory government under her leadership would remove the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights.

But one senior party figure told HuffPost UK: “She needs to not act like a sad Reform tribute act and instead make the most of the fact Labour is fighting Reform whilst we get our act together and become grown up politicians again.”

Another Tory insider was more succinct: “I don’t want much really, just for her not to be weird.”

The last time the Conservatives gathered in Manchester, in 2023, the Conservatives were........

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