This week, the Conservative Party gained an unlikely new supporter.

Azealia Banks, the New York rapper, whose album Broke with Expensive Taste has racked up 300 million Spotify streams, declared on X: “Kemi Badenoch is f**king iconic. World leaders will respect her Professionalism alot more than goofball Nigel.”

Banks may be on trend. While the Tories continue to bounce around 20 per cent in the polls – a meagre showing for the party sometimes described as the most successful in the democratic world – the Leader of the Opposition has seen an uptick in her personal ratings.

Two recent polls for The i Paper by BMG Research show Badenoch’s net approval at -7 – not brilliant, but markedly better than Nigel Farage on -16 or the dire -46 scored by Sir Keir Starmer.

Reform UK has consistently led in the opinion polling for a year now. But that lead looks soft: the party is only in the mid-20s, far off the 40 per cent or so that opposition parties have historically needed to put themselves on course for power, amid evidence that the populist right may have a hard ceiling on........

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