Thursday night was a brutal verdict on Keir Starmer’s leadership. Remarkably, Labour has performed even worse than in 2021 – when Starmer reportedly had to be talked down from resigning as Leader of the Opposition.

Last year’s general election was a heavy defeat for the Conservatives, and it’s no surprise that, less than a year on, we’re still seeing tough results. We’re under no illusions: there’s much work to do to prove that our party is changing under a new generation of leadership. We are only at the beginning of a long-term plan to rebuild, renew, and regain your trust. But there is a way to go yet.

Thursday night was hard. Hundreds of dedicated Conservative councillors – who have fought tirelessly to deliver better services for lower taxes for their communities –lost their seats. That’s never easy. And we always knew it would be difficult following a strong showing in the 2021 locals.

Yet there were signs of hope. The election of Paul Bristow as the new Conservative Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough was a major win – taking a key mayoralty from Labour. He will be a strong local champion, committed to our values: lower taxes, better public services, and a smaller, smarter state.

Let’s be clear: there is only one Conservative Party.

Reform UK may speak the language of frustration, but they are not Conservatives. They are populists – promising the impossible and playing fast and loose with the truth. At the last election, they proposed £140billion in unfunded spending while their figurehead, Nigel Farage

, expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin. Since then, they’ve aligned themselves with hard-left unions, defended protest disruption, and pledged yet more tax rises. They even cheered on as rats the size of cats terrorised the residents of Birmingham.

Their mask is starting to slip though. Voters will begin to see through the populism. They say whatever they think will win applause, with little concern for reality. But you can’t promise tax cuts while proposing vast spending increases. That kind of politics might be popular in the short term, but it doesn’t survive contact with reality. Sooner or later, their candidates will discover they’ve written cheques they can’t cash. Keyboard warriors rarely build serious ideas for governing Britain.

What’s equally clear is that the public is turning on Keir Starmer. Just eight months into his premiership, the shine has long since come off. The British people are not fools and they clearly will want his hands off the levers of power at the first available opportunity. It is our job to make sure that we regain your trust to get him out in that time so we can deliver for the country.

The cracks are showing. In addition to Labour performing worse than four years ago, one of Starmer’s newly elected Labour mayors wasted no time and began her new term by openly criticising his leadership. Her first act was to denounce his decision to scrap the Winter Fuel Payment from 10 million pensioners—a cruel move that Conservatives have opposed every step of the way.

Make no mistake, we are the only opposition holding Labour to account. It is Conservatives who are doing the hard yards in Parliament. On the Winter Fuel Payment

, the jobs tax, two-tier justice – it’s Conservative MPs who are forcing Labour to rethink, concede and u-turn. Meanwhile, Reform MPs are nowhere to be seen – absent from the key debates on defence, the economy, and foreign policy.

The road back to power will be long and hard. But it begins by owning the mistakes we made and showing we’ve learned from them. What we’ve heard from the country is clear: Britain cannot afford two terms of Starmer’s Labour in Downing Street.

Kemi Badenoch and the Conservative team are focused on rebuilding, rethinking, and renewing our offer to the British people. This is just the beginning. The Conservatives are in the process of a once-in-a-generation policy renewal, where we are developing a fresh platform and offering a positive vision for the future. That is what opposition is about. It’s where Keir failed but Kemi will succeed.

Every marathon starts with a single step – and every day, we’re taking another step toward removing this failing Labour government from power.