Much like Alan Partridge, Kemi Badenoch hopes to have bounced back. After an unsure start to her first year as Tory leader – hopeless interviews and PMQs showings, and a local election shellacking – she now seems to be on a roll. Her two recent set piece speeches at conference and responding to the Budget were successes, her parliamentary performances have been more assured, and she can now get through an interview without declaring war on her ethnic enemies. The Conservatives are no longer spiralling towards fourth; her personal ratings have ticked up to the dizzying heights of -14.

For the first time since Badenoch became leader, I feel a faint twig of optimism

For those of us of a Kemi-sceptic disposition, this is quite distressing. When you have become used to someone falling flat on their face again and again, their failure to continue doing so astonishes. I had expected her to flop at a wake-like party conference, to continue missing open goals at PMQs and to build up sufficient resentment that – either before or after May’s locals, set to be as disastrous as 2025’s but on a wider scale – she would either be junked by her MPs or resign out of shame. But I was wrong. The rot appears to have stopped.

Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I had allowed my vision to be clouded by several things: a low estimation of Badenoch’s abilities, my zest for Robert Jenrick and my deep and all-consuming pessimism about my........

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