For the Conservative Party, October 2025 has been a month of hard truths and fleeting optimism. While the world’s attention turned to the dramatic release of hostages in Gaza, back in Britain, the Tories found themselves fighting for relevance, battered by electoral defeats and overshadowed by the rising force of Reform UK. The party that once claimed Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher as its own now faces what many describe as the lowest ebb in its storied history.
The numbers paint a stark picture. According to a Find Out Now poll following the party’s annual conference, the Conservatives saw their vote share tick up by three points—a glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak landscape. Opinium reported an eight-point boost in Kemi Badenoch’s net approval rating, and party chairman Kevin Hollinrake was quick to tout a 33% approval score for Badenoch’s conference speech. Yet these modest gains were quickly overshadowed by more sobering news: Reform UK, led by the ever-polarizing Nigel Farage, was leading the Conservatives by a staggering 14 points in the polls—31% to 17%—as of October 14, 2025, according to Talk.
The local by-elections told an even grimmer story. Last week, the Conservatives lost both seats they were defending—Skelton East on Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, and Bretforton and Offenham on Wychavon District Council. In both contests, the party plummeted from first to third place. In Skelton, the Reform candidate secured a crushing 65% of the vote, a result that left little doubt about the shifting allegiances of voters in the North and much of middle England. As UnHerd put it, “the North belongs to Nigel Farage now, as does most of middle England.”
This realignment has not gone unnoticed within the party’s own ranks. The defection of high-profile figures has become an all-too-common occurrence. In September, former Tory culture secretary Nadine Dorries jumped ship to Reform UK, bluntly declaring the Conservative Party “dead.” Danny Kruger, once a key speechwriter for David Cameron and political secretary to Boris Johnson, followed suit, lambasting his former party for being “rightly and naturally punished for its record” and for “failing to control our borders.” Kruger’s criticism on mass migration and tax policy struck a chord with many disillusioned Conservatives, adding fuel to the fire.
The party conference in Manchester, held in early October, did little to dispel the gloom. Journalists described the atmosphere as “depressing,” with lackluster attendance and little enthusiasm for the speeches or the party’s direction. In a telling moment, the organizers reportedly drew a curtain across half of the exhibition hall to make the sparse crowd seem bigger. Meanwhile, Reform UK’s gathering in Birmingham was, by contrast, a lively affair, buzzing with ordinary people eager for change. Many of Reform’s 260,000 members are former Tory loyalists who, as Talk’s Mike Graham noted, “will never vote for the Conservative Party again.”
Despite these setbacks, some within the Conservative Party remain convinced that recovery is possible. There is talk of new ideas, such as abolishing Stamp Duty and dismantling elements of the Blair-era settlement—moves that signal a willingness to rethink the machinery of government. Badenoch’s conference speech was hailed as proof of the party’s capacity for improvement and leadership potential. As UnHerd observed, “when we try we can still be the best. Alone of all the party leaders this conference season, Badenoch stood out as prime ministerial.”
Yet optimism is in short supply among the public. The party’s recent history is littered with electoral disasters. The landslide defeat in July 2024 reduced the Conservatives to 121 seats, down from a comfortable majority of 80. The prospect of an even worse rout looms in the local elections scheduled for May 2026. The specter of Margaret Thatcher continues to haunt the party, with her memorabilia on display but her political magic long faded. Even Boris Johnson’s much-publicized book tour failed to rekindle enthusiasm among former supporters, many of whom now see him as a “failure and a traitor to the cause.”
Meanwhile, party infighting and blame-shifting have become routine. As each week passes, more former ministers seek to distance themselves from the mistakes of the Boris, Sunak, and Truss eras. If “delusion was a currency they could cash in for victory, there might be some hope for the modern Conservative Party,” Graham quipped on Talk.
Still, the party’s leadership bench remains crowded. Should poll numbers remain dire, a change at the top is all but inevitable. Names like Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly, and Tom Tugendhat are frequently mentioned as potential successors, with the ever-dramatic possibility of a Boris Johnson comeback lurking in the background. As UnHerd argued, “it’s not having an indispensable leader like Farage that guarantees a party’s long-term survival, but the ability to keep rolling the dice.”
Time, at least, is on their side. The current parliament is just over a year old, and much can change before the next general election. Some argue that the party’s dire position offers a strange kind of freedom: with little left to lose, the Conservatives can afford to experiment, even if it means tearing the party apart and rebuilding from the ground up.
Yet the risks are real. Should their vote share dip below 20% in the next general election, the party could lose most of its remaining seats, potentially relegating the Conservatives to a minor role while Reform UK claims a Commons majority in 2029. Such a scenario would be “humiliating,” as UnHerd put it, but even a diminished Conservative vote could prove crucial. If Reform’s majority rests on just a third of the vote, critics on the left could question the legitimacy of sweeping reforms like withdrawal from the ECHR. In that case, selective Conservative support might help blunt such arguments.
There are other wildcards. Labour could introduce proportional representation before the next election, fundamentally altering the political landscape. Such a move could reduce Reform’s parliamentary presence and open the door to a left-of-center coalition. And, of course, Reform UK itself is not immune to internal strife. Built largely on the charisma of Nigel Farage, the party could falter, giving the Conservatives a chance to reclaim their traditional role—much as the Christian Democrats did in the Netherlands after the collapse of a populist government.
Through it all, the Conservative Party clings to its identity as the oldest political party in the free world, founded in 1912 and rooted in a tradition of conserving long-standing institutions. As UnHerd’s Peter Franklin mused, “if that doesn’t include the oldest political party in the free world, then what’s the point of us?” For now, the party’s future hangs in the balance—caught between a storied past and an uncertain tomorrow, but not yet ready to surrender its place in British political life.
