Sitting in a parliamentary office with Kemi Badenoch shortly before the close of the Tory vote last week, two things struck me.

The first was that she was pretty sure she was going to win. That sense of dauntless confidence edged out a candidate (Robert Jenrick) who is in many ways closer to the party base than Badenoch in his views and language on immigration, definitely on leaving the ECHR and sundry other fixations of an ageing membership

The second was that there is going to be an interesting dynamic between Badenoch’s register, which veers towards a fight – “That’s a journalist’s question,” she replied tersely when I asked if she really has a chance of being prime minister – and the diplomacy needed for the other side of her new day job.

That means melding many diverse opinions of the rump Conservative Party and having team-building skills at the heart of her mission to give the party a sense of soul and purpose it has lost.

Badenoch has said the Conservatives need to understand where they have lost voters faith and why, before they can provide a checklist of easy answers or........

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