To have a chance of surviving as a major political party, the Tories need to distinguish themselves from both Labour and Reform UK.

In a speech today at the Center for Social Justice, Leader of the Opposition Kemi Badenoch attempted to do just that. Her topic was the urgent need to bring down the benefits bill for working-age adults. The Tory leader’s key message, repeated throughout her speech, was that only her party is serious about reining in the ballooning welfare state.

It’s easy to see why she thinks she has an opportunity here. The government has already been forced into a humiliating retreat on welfare reform. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage took the opportunistic decision to oppose the government’s most unpopular measures — the scrapping of winter fuel payments and the two-child benefit cap. So on the face of it, Badenoch appears to be on solid ground. Only the Tories look tough enough to push people back into work and save the country from bankruptcy.

But her strategy has two fatal flaws. The first is that Reform is bound to change tack. As he gets closer to power, Farage will come under increasing pressure to identify the savings needed to pay for his promised tax cuts. Expect Reform policy on welfare to get decidedly draconian. The second flaw is the Tories’ own record in government. As Badenoch herself said: “The obvious question is: ‘This is your system. How can you criticize what you’ve run for 14 years?’”

Unfortunately, she didn’t provide an obvious answer. What we got instead was a potted — and selective — history of Conservative achievements in power. For instance, she praised the CSJ chairman Iain Duncan Smith for introducing Universal Credit when he was the work and pensions secretary. What she didn’t mention was that IDS had to fight tooth-and-nail to stop the Treasury from sabotaging his reforms — an issue he eventually resigned over.

Badenoch also praised the CSJ’s landmark 2006 “Breakdown Britain” report, which was instrumental in making the case for radical welfare reform. What went unsaid is that the think tank has also called for action on family breakdown, substance abuse, problem debt and other social ills. Over 20 years on, British society is still broken, but the mainstream parties, including the Conservatives, are still too liberal to admit the truth.

That said, there was a genuine jobs miracle in the 2010s. Even without solutions to underlying social problems, welfare reform alone can get large numbers of people back into work. So why has so much of that progress unwound over the last five years? Badenoch used her speech to blame the pandemic. But it wasn’t Covid-19 that weakened eligibility criteria for sickness benefits to the point of absurdity. Nor did the virus force the Tories to unleash the “Boriswave” of uncontrolled immigration. Rather, that double whammy was the result of ministers failing to get a grip on the entirely predictable consequences of government policy.

Unfortunately for Kemi Badenoch, she’s filled her shadow cabinet with people who were in key positions at the time. For instance, the former Home Secretary, Priti Patel, and the former work and pensions secretary, Mel Stride (sitting in the front row during today’s speech). As the Tory leader said today: “We need to win the argument that personal responsibility matters”. Indeed it does, but party responsibility matters too — and once again she’s failed to take it.

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Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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