It was an awkward moment for the Conservatives at their annual conference in Manchester: party faithful, journalists, and even a few bemused onlookers found themselves clutching blue-wrapped chocolate bars emblazoned with a motivational slogan from their leader, Kemi Badenoch. The message was clear—except for a glaring error. "When Labour negotiates, Britian loses," the wrapper read, the country’s name misspelled for all to see. Organisers quickly blamed a printing error and yanked the offending treats from circulation, but not before social media erupted with jokes and jibes. One user quipped, “I’m hearing Wispas about Kemi’s leadership.”
This minor mishap might have been shrugged off in another year, but in 2025, every detail is magnified. The Conservatives, only 15 months out of power, are fighting for relevance in a political landscape that feels as if it’s shifting beneath their feet. The party’s annual gathering, once the stage for confident policy rollouts and unity, now seemed more like a battleground for survival.
According to The Conversation, the real existential threat isn’t a typo—it’s Reform UK. Once dismissed as a fringe movement, the party, formerly known as the Brexit Party, has surged in both electoral success and polling. Its leader, Nigel Farage, is a seasoned populist who’s mastered the art of connecting with voters in the age of viral soundbites and social media. This year, even Prime Minister Keir Starmer, during his own party conference speech, focused his fire on Farage, barely mentioning Conservative leader Badenoch. The message was hard to miss: Reform, not the Tories, is now seen as Labour’s main rival on the right.
Observers point out that the Conservative party, with its long history of weathering storms and absorbing rivals, is confronting a challenge unlike any before. Historian Richard Cockett has described the party as a “Darwinian” organism—able to adapt, survive, and even thrive through crises ranging from the Corn Laws split under Sir Robert Peel to the rise of Labour in the early 20th century. But Reform UK’s swift ascent and real electoral wins have rattled this confidence. As The Conversation notes, “To describe Reform as an existential threat in this context is therefore all the more striking.”
Part of Reform’s appeal is its outsider status. At its 2025 annual conference, the party leaned heavily into immigration as a core issue, but offered little in the way of concrete policy on housing or health. This lack of detail hasn’t dented its momentum. According to BBC, Farage and his team have capitalized on a wave of discontent with establishment politics, echoing global trends—from Trumpism in the United States to rising populist movements across Europe. Voters, it seems, are hungry for disruption, even if the menu isn’t fully fleshed out.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives are scrambling to define themselves. Under Kemi Badenoch’s leadership, the party has taken a sharp turn away from its own recent legacy. At the Manchester conference, the Tories pledged to roll back green energy rules in a bid to cut energy costs—a move that marks a complete reversal from the net zero commitments championed by previous leaders such as Theresa May and Boris Johnson. Gone is the post-Brexit carbon pricing system. Gone too are the 20-year green energy certificates, set to end more than a decade ahead of schedule. The party claims these changes will knock £165 off the average household energy bill.
But the battle over energy costs is fierce. Labour is promising a £300 reduction in domestic bills through a plan to decarbonize the grid. Reform UK, never shy about big numbers, argues that scrapping “net zero madness” could save families a whopping £1,000 a year. Shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho, wielding graphs and a remote control at the conference, dismissed Reform’s claim as “nonsense,” likening it to Jeremy Corbyn’s pie-in-the-sky promise of free broadband in 2019. “Anyone with half a brain can see that won’t cut bills,” she told party activists, insisting that voters care about credibility, not just headline-grabbing pledges.
The Conservatives’ broader economic pitch is equally bold. On October 6, Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride unveiled a plan to slash state spending by £47 billion—about $63 billion—in an attempt to restore the party’s reputation for fiscal prudence. The strategy involves cutting a quarter of the civil service, halving international development aid, and finding £23 billion in savings from the welfare bill. “We have to be very honest and clear about what we’ve got wrong,” Stride said, echoing a note of remorse that’s become more common among party leaders lately.
Yet, as The Conversation points out, the Tories’ attempts to chase Reform UK further right may be backfiring. By trying to outflank their rivals on issues like immigration and energy, they risk alienating moderate supporters and splitting the hard-right vote. The party’s historic strength, after all, has been its ability to project unity and competent leadership while appealing to a broad cross-section of voters. Now, with Reform UK steadily eroding its base, the Conservatives seem caught between reinvention and retrenchment.
All of this is playing out against a backdrop of political fragmentation unseen since the early days of the Labour party’s rise. New groupings are sprouting on both the left and right. Former Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana are launching a new party, tentatively dubbed "Your Party." Even the once-influential European Research Group of Tory MPs has faded into near-irrelevance since the last election. The result is a political landscape that’s more fractured—and volatile—than at any time in recent memory.
And yet, for all the drama and uncertainty, the Conservatives’ future may still hinge on something as simple as adaptation. As history has shown, the party has a knack for survival. But this time, the stakes feel different. The rise of Reform UK, the scramble over energy policy, the drive for fiscal austerity, and even the fallout from a misspelled chocolate bar—each is a symptom of a party at a crossroads, searching for a new identity in a rapidly changing Britain.
As the conference wraps up and the chocolate bars are (hopefully) correctly spelled, the Conservatives are left with a daunting question: can they evolve quickly enough to survive, or will Reform UK’s populist wave fundamentally reshape the right for years to come?
