The Tories are still on life support – so why is Badenoch in celebratory mood?

Party leader has been vocal about its gains in London and there is a feeling that its losses could have been worse By any sane person’s reckoning, the Conservative party had a night to forget in Thursday’s local, mayoral and devolved elections. It lost about 500 councillors in England and ceded control of three local authorities to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK – losing to the rightwing upstarts in England, Wales and Scotland. Why, then, is Kemi Badenoch hailing these results as proof that “the Conservatives are coming back” – and why do many Tory MPs appear to agree with her? The Conservative leader was vocal on Friday about the eye-catching gains her party made in politically atypical London, where the Tories won back the totemic council of Westminster, took the most seats in Wandsworth council and saw off the threat from Reform in Bexley and Bromley. But it was hard to ignore the damage in her own back yard of Essex, where Badenoch and five other shadow cabinet ministers are MPs. Reform ended the party’s 25-year reign at the local authority, as well as taking the Tory-held Newcastle-under-Lyme and Suffolk, as well as making inroads in East and West Sussex. In parts of