Kemi Badenoch has notched up 100 days as Conservative party leader.
To say she’s celebrating this century would be wrong, though. Marking it, perhaps.
And after a difficult first 100 days, the verdict on Ms Badenoch’s performance could best be described as a work in progress.
When she won the Tory crown on 2 November last year, defeating Robert Jenrick, she said: “It’s time to renew.”
But what’s new just over three months later? Not much, apart from a slump in the opinion polls and Nigel Farage threatening to destroy the Tory Party.
After a very long wait, it was last week that Ms Badenoch unveiled her first policy: a crackdown on immigrants’ right to remain in the UK.
As well as bowing to pressure from critics in her party to announce some policies, it was seen as a response to Reform UK topping a Sky News/YouGov poll for the first time.
On the Sky News Electoral Dysfunction podcast, former Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson said Ms Badenoch is “running into trouble” and may only have 18 months in the job.
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Back in November, she inherited a party that was demoralised and broke, down to 121 MPs, with many of its leading figures and star performers rejected by the voters.
As well as leading talents like Penny Mordaunt losing their seat, her charismatic leadership rival James Cleverly and other former ministers opted to return to the back benches.
Some struggles at PMQs
At her first prime minister’s questions, buoyed by President Trump’s overnight victory in the US, she had fun recalling all the insults hurled at The Donald by Labour politicians in the past.
She also boldly called on Sir Keir Starmer to resign, quoting an online petition calling for a general election. But Sir Keir gently reminded her there was “a massive petition” on the 4th of July.
Several PMQs later, she still hasn’t landed any major blows on Sir Keir, partly because she has so few MPs behind her and he has a vast army of backbenchers cheering him on.
But critics argue that she still has too much of a scattergun approach with her six questions, moving from one subject to another rather than probing forensically on one issue.
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Tories pledge to tighten immigration
Last Wednesday, for example, she tackled the PM on Chagos, the Roseback oil and gas field, his voice coach, AstraZeneca, GB Energy jobs, energy bills and winter fuel allowances.
Teething problems with the media
There’s also criticism from some of her MPs that she’s virtually invisible in the media. Insiders claim she “hates doing media” and sends shadow cabinet colleagues in her place.
When she does face the media, such as when she made a big set-piece policy speech in January, she upsets many of her Tory colleagues by criticising the party’s record in government.
In that speech, she criticised Theresa May and Boris Johnson for leaving the EU without a plan, Mrs May again for net zero targets without a plan and Mr Johnson and Rishi Sunak for promising to reduce immigration while it rose to record levels.
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On Boxing Day, when Mr Farage claimed Reform UK had overtaken the Tories’ 131,000 members, Ms Badenoch claimed the figures were fake. This weekend, however, he claimed his party had topped 200,000 members.
Nigel Farage is out-performing Badenoch as an opposition leader
It’s also claimed she shuns the so-called “rubber chicken circuit” of constituency dinners and fundraising events. When former Tory donors are pouring money into Reform UK, the Tories need every penny they can raise.
Others criticise her abrasive style. When she gave what was supposed to be a pep-talk to staff at Tory HQ last week, it’s claimed some were left in tears after she told them if they didn’t “shape up” they “shouldn’t be in CCHQ”.
But in an interview later in the week, she was unapologetic about her speech to her party workers. “We need sometimes to have tough words when people aren’t doing well,” she said defiantly.
Robert Jenrick who lost out to Badenoch in the Tory leadership race is also a problem
Another problem for Ms Badenoch is that her defeated leadership rival, Robert Jenrick, is acting as if he’s still campaigning for the top job and gives every impression of seeking to undermine her and eventually succeed her.
He has also annoyed her by repeatedly refusing to rule out a Tory pact with Mr Farage and Reform UK, something she has emphatically rejected. Nevertheless, those calls for a pact or deal are getting louder and louder.
A generous interpretation of Ms Badenoch’s Commons clashes with the prime minister would be that she’s holding her own.
But her problem is that the charismatic, hyper-active, media-savvy, TikTok-loving Mr Farage is spectacularly out-performing her as an opposition leader.
And that, more than anything else, is her biggest problem after 100 days as Tory leader.
