Kemi Badenoch's first few days as Tory leader shows us the partygate legacy left by Boris Johnson could continue to plague the party.
The job facing Badenoch was always going to be a challenge, especially following the general election result which saw the Tories take a record low of 121 seats.
It's clear that party members are not united in where they want the party to go in the future as it addresses the rise of Reform and the resurgence in popularity for Labour.
Since taking the job, she has made it clear she thinks the Tories can beat Labour at the next general election. But she has a number of challenges.
She has already made efforts to address the disunity that has emerged in the party over the last few years.
Placing some major Johnson-era allies like Priti Patel in her shadow cabinet as shadow foreign secretary is a first step in this. As is appointing her main leadership rival Robert Jenrick in a key role as shadow justice secretary.
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But her party still has a major problem with letting go of the past. A large part of the membership can't seem to shift away from the reign of Boris Johnson.
Badenoch has already played into this.
After just a day in the job, Badenoch, a self-proclaimed “straight talker”, declared the partygate scandal – the one that saw senior Tories, including then prime minister Boris Johnson, attend gatherings at Downing Street during Covid restrictions – as “overblown”.
People had the right to be angry by these actions, she admitted, but said the problem was that placing restrictions on every day activities was the real issue. The families of those who lost their lives during Covid, and those who made sacrifices to protect their loved ones, are justifiably outraged.
Similar comments around partygate have haunted the Tories for years, and played a key part in the reasons for the significant general election defeat to Labour.
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Meanwhile new Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay is eager for his party north of the border to take a fresh approach, recognising the need to move on from the past and appeal to those who turned away from the Tories.
Badenoch’s challenge is whether she takes heed of this, but her continued praise of Boris Johnson (she also described him as a “great prime minister) shows that under her direction, the party is more interested in the past than it is the future.
Her comments, along with her shadow cabinet appointments, inspires little hope that this is a party who have torn up the previous script and can offer something new.
The face of the party has changed many times in the two years since Johnson departed office. First with Liz Truss, then Rishi Sunak and now with Kemi Badenoch.
And as the party wrangles to rediscover its identity against the surge of support for Reform, it seems the new leadership is heading towards an epilogue of the Covid-era leadership, with a Boris Johnson 2.0 in charge.
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