That gap between members and MPs is the central problem of Badenoch’s campaign. Nearly all available polling forecasts her to win the final round, which is decided by membership votes. Yet it isn’t clear that she can reach that stage. Jenrick currently leads the pack for MP nominations, and there are more than enough votes on the One Nation side of the party to put either James Cleverly or Tom Tugendhat in the final.

Should that happen, it will be Badenoch’s responsibility. The MP rounds are a vital round of the process, ensuring that the leader is acceptable to the Parliamentary party and insulating the Tories against their own version of Jeremy Corbyn.

But they could still provide a dilemma for the new leader. Whoever wins is going to inherit an incredibly difficult brief, and getting the Conservative Party fit to contend for office in 2029 is going to involve confronting some unpleasant realities. The mood might have been oddly buoyant in Birmingham, but the membership’s appetite for unpleasant medicine has not yet been tested.

If the new leader becomes unpopular, which is entirely possible, it would be deeply destabilising to have an alternative candidate waiting in the wings. A candidate, say, whom polling suggested would have been the members’ choice, had they been given her as an option. Just think back to Boris Johnson, who loomed over both his immediate predecessor and successors while cultivating broad Conservative support.

Badenoch’s leadership campaign might — almost certainly wasn’t, but might — have been calibrated for this outcome. She largely sat out the first half of the contest, and has sternly refused to be drawn on anything resembling policy.

Her pitch to Birmingham this week had the same broad outline as Jenrick’s, but without the detail. Where he listed five broad areas of focus and a scattering of specific policies to flesh them out, Badenoch promised a bold and comprehensive audit of just about everything — and nothing in particular.

It’s a canny line, given the selectorate. It’s easy enough to say that in office the Tories “talked Right, but governed Left”; much harder is confronting why that happened in the first place. Conservative MPs have been at the vanguard of resistance to constructing everything from homes to prisons to pylons; taxes and immigration kept climbing to fund public spending such as the winter fuel allowance, a payment to the wealthy which Badenoch supports. What’s more, there was a relative lack of attention given over to housing in her speech — despite her holding the post of Shadow Housing Secretary.

Badenoch thus risks falling into exactly the same trap as other recent Tory leaders, from David Cameron onwards. That is: turning easy homilies about lower taxes and a smaller state into concrete cuts to spending and red tape, and translating headline commitments on immigration into gruelling combat with powerful vested interests and the Treasury.

None of that matters, however, if she doesn’t win. Instead, Badenoch might be well-positioned to pose as the party’s “queen over the water”, with her own power base primed to attack whoever becomes Tory leader. If that happens, she’ll always be ready to remind anyone who’ll listen of the grand — if hazy — prizes the Conservatives might have won.

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Henry Hill is Deputy Editor of ConservativeHome.

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