Conservative chair Kevin Hollinrake has said the party is “not where we need to be right now”, and would ideally prefer the next general election to come “some way down the track”.
Speaking at a More in Common fringe event at Conservative conference in Birmingham, Hollinrake said: “Of course, we are not where we need to be right now. We don’t want an election right now. Ideally, that would come some way down the track.”
He said the party was “behind the game right now”, and suggested that, on current polling, the next election “doesn’t look winnable outright by anybody”.
But Hollinrake insisted the Conservatives had made “a huge amount of progress” over the past year, adding that the mood at conference was “a whole lot better than it was 12 months ago”.
He was straightforward about the reasons for the party’s defeat in 2024. “We lost trust at the end of our 14 years [in government], and trust is very hard to win and very easy to lose”, he said. “And we lost it, and so we’ve got to build back. But we are building back.”
Hollinrake said Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, was more trusted than the party itself. “People do trust [Kemi], and they don’t trust us”, he said. “That’s how I put it in a nutshell.”
He claimed that for “the first time in history, the Conservative Party is now the least hated political party in the country”. He said Reform UK was the most disliked party, followed by Labour, which he argued would matter for tactical voting at the next election.
Hollinrake praised Badenoch for saying that the Conservatives would win the next election, describing the claim as “a very bold thing to say”.
He also said the party was more united than a year ago, when “we weren’t a united party… for one or two good reasons”.
He added: “Those people are no longer with us, and we have got a great leader. We’ve got a fantastic team of people, and we’ve got proper plans.”
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Shadow home secretary Chris Philp, who also spoke on the panel, suggested Andy Burnham was unlikely to call an early election.
“The polls are very volatile. Things are changing a lot, generally in our direction”, Philp said. “And if the election is two years away, which I think – or three years away, which I think is more likely than not – if you project forward our progress, I think we’ll be in a good place, not just to be the largest party, but to win outright.”
These comments appear to contradict the position Badenoch as Conservative leader took in the weeks before conference.
Last month, speaking on LBC Radio‘s phone-in with Iain Dale, Badenoch argued that an early poll was likely. “I think it’s this December”, she said. “I think Andy Burnham is a gambler. I think he might fancy his chances, but we fancy ours as well.”
Kemi Badenoch predicts ‘gambler’ Burnham will call election in December
