Unlike Liz Truss, who blamed her downfall on the “deep state”, one might call Badenoch’s bugbear the “shallow state”. There’s nothing covert or conspiratorial going on here, but instead an all-too-familiar set of bureaucratic and legal constraints on ministerial action. The Tories never got anywhere because they were tied up in knots.

There’s no doubt that inertia and obstructionism are everyday frustrations in Whitehall. And yet there are three big holes in Badenoch’s argument.

Firstly, the constraints that governments impose upon themselves are sometimes there for a reason. Take the UK’s obligations as a member of Nato: it’s surely a good thing that the defence of the West is underpinned by Article 5, rather than at the discretion of ministers. The same applies to our Net Zero commitment to tackling climate change. This isn’t the “very definition of over-legislating” as Badenoch claims, but the clear steer that businesses need before making multi-decade, multi-billion-pound investments in new energy infrastructure.

Secondly, even where constraints on Government action are completely unjustified, they don’t always come from within the state. Just look at the 14-year failure of successive Tory governments to build enough houses. The main issue was not the planning system or Nimbyism, but rather the fact that big private-sector developers have no incentive to build at a rate that might bring down property prices. A truly conservative reform agenda cannot be directed at the public sector alone.

Thirdly, in those cases where the obstacles do come from within the state, the ultimate responsibility doesn’t lie with the bureaucracy or the judiciary, but with the governing political party. Badenoch mentions the influence exerted by “left-leaning charities” within Whitehall — but who invited them in and filled their coffers with public money? This may not always have happened as a ministerial initiative, but ministers could and should have pushed back. Badenoch is in a better place to understand this than most, because to her immense credit she successfully opposed the activists when she was in office.

That there weren’t more Badenochs advancing a genuine conservative agenda from 2010 to 2024 wasn’t the fault of Tony Blair or the Whitehall system, but of the Conservative Party and its last five leaders. It’s time for the new leadership contenders to admit the truth.

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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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