The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, will march on to the conference stage in Birmingham feeling buoyed. “Kemi’s soaring,” coos the Sun, and that sums up the prevailing wisdom. More than four in 10 Britons think she is doing well as Tory leader, compared with a third who think otherwise. As Nigel Farage’s stock has plummeted thanks to scandals over a £5m personal gift and donations from crypto billionaires, the polling suggests that the Conservatives could regain the mantle of Britain’s main rightwing force.

Yet Badenoch has been the beneficiary of circumstance. Her tenure as opposition leader has been defined by Keir Starmer’s project imploding almost as soon as it gained power. When Reform UK enjoyed its seismic polling lead, the Tory plight was double-edged: they were starved of attention, but that inevitably resulted in a lack of scrutiny, too. It has been easy for Badenoch to appear formidable while her opponents have disintegrated.

With the Conservatives now back in the race, the spotlight falls on Badenoch. Let us consider the absurdity of her proposed air defence system. Our would-be prime minister denied comparing it to Israel’s Iron Dome, despite the term appearing in both a press release and a newspaper article under her own name. This amateurishness is one thing, but even on its own terms, her proposal is a mess. It will “protect the whole United Kingdom, our sovereign territories and British bases overseas”, she claims, which would be impossible for the........

© The Guardian