One of the origin stories about Kemi Badenoch’s career as politician is that, while waiting to be interviewed as candidate for Saffron Walden, she sat alone, listening through headphones to Survivor’s ‘Eye of the Tiger’ – that pounding, sinew-stiffening theme to Rocky III. Given the ups and downs of her year as leader – not unlike a Rocky film in itself – it now seems a prescient choice of song. Kemi, in the past month, has finally come out punching.

It was Badenoch’s tour de force response to Rachel Reeves’s Budget of Broken Promises, that seemed to change her fortunes

Perhaps the wait was unavoidable – few newly-elected party leaders have had to face so many difficulties in their first year. There have been the patronising put-downs and haywire political bluster of Keir Starmer across the way, answering her questions with a dementing haze of irrelevancies and non-sequiturs. There were credible rumours in May of a plot against her leadership, with Dominic Cummings prophesying she’d be gone by the end of year. Right-wing columnists undermined her weekly, while ‘secret politicians’ on her own side did the dirt on her as well.

In Parliament, a few seats down, was the lean and hungry Robert Jenrick – a man who got 46 per cent of the leadership vote, and whose rictus smile on her election seemed to guarantee a future of Badenoch having to look constantly in the rear view mirror or wear a stab-vest 24-7. On the benches opposite, sitting smugly on his poll rating, was the lupine Member for Clacton, a man who’d reportedly vowed to ‘destroy the Conservative party’ and seemed to have made a good start. As late as conference time, Channel 4’s Cathy Newman was crowing: ‘Every........

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