Bad as things are for Labour, they are tougher for Tories and Kemi faces crunch week

Just before Kemi Badenoch walks onto the conference stage this week to deliver one of the most important speeches of her career, she may mutter to her aides: "Don't call it a comeback." The Conservative autumn conference in Manchester is her first as leader. Last year's Tory gathering was an epic hustings in which candidates for the top job set out their visions for rebirth in the wake of the party's catastrophic defeat to Labour.

In the months since then support for Labour has collapsed. Sir Keir Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves are now notorious for their unpopularity. But bad as things are for Labour, the situation is even worse for the Conservatives. In recent days Politico's poll of polls put the Conservatives on 16% - just 1% above their old foes, the Liberal Democrats; four points behind Labour and 14 behind Nigel Farage's Reform UK.

Labour treats the Conservatives as an irrelevance, training its fire on Reform. When Sir Keir mentioned the Conservatives in last Tuesday's conference speech it was to joke: "Do you remember them?"

The prolonged Conservative leadership campaign - coupled with the reasonable belief in Tory circles that when the electorate sends you packing it makes sense to pipe down for a while - meant the party missed opportunities to make the most of Labour's early acts of self-sabotage.

The withdrawal of universal winter fuel payments for pensioners, the hiking of inheritance tax on farmers and the shock increase in employers' National Insurance were all acts which hit traditional Tory voters. Britons were aghast at Labour's first actions in office but they did not wish the Tories were back in office.

Instead, Mr Farage invited people repelled by the records of the two traditional parties of power to make their new home with Reform UK. Labour has continued to take decisions which in normal times would drive small-c conservatives back into the Tory fold - such as handing the Chagos Islands to Mauritius and pressing ahead with the repeal of measures to protect Northern Ireland veterans from prosecution - but there is no surge in support for Mrs Badenoch's party.

She needs to convince citizens the Conservatives have policies to fix the biggest problems facing the country. The trouble is, Right-leaning voters have fresh memories of recent Tory administrations failing to stop the boats and presiding over extraordinary levels of legal immigration; mortgage owners trace painful hikes in bills back to Liz Truss's tenure; the housing crisis pre-dates Labour's arrival in power, and 14 years of Conservative rule failed to fix the stagnation in wages which began with the 2008 financial crisis.

Voters incensed by the push for net zero remember Theresa May's strengthening of targets and ask why the Tories allowed Britain to be saddled with punishingly high energy bills. And while Britons may be unimpressed by the PM's taste for freebies and the debacles which have felled Angela Rayner and Lord Mandelson, anger at the "partygate" scandal which did so much to weaken Boris Johnson continues to throb in sections of the electorate.

The Conservatives are now trying to place their tanks on Reform's teal turf, promising to leave the European Convention on Human Rights and scrap the Climate Change Act.

There is scepticism whether it is possible to "out-Farage Farage". David Cameron led the Tories back into power in 2010 by rebranding the party as champions of economic prudence who also cared deeply about the environment and the society children would grow up in; this helped him paint swathes of Lib Dem territory blue.

As the party moves decisively to the Right, so-called One Nation Conservatives will worry they are abandoning the centre ground by chasing Reform. But the threat posed by Mr Farage's party is intense.

When Mrs Badenoch looks out from the conference stage at the audience, she will worry if she cannot see young Tories, the men and women who become staffers and candidates, refining the election-winning formulae which have powered so many years of Conservative success. If these footsoldiers throw their lot in with Reform - and many have - then her party will lose its greatest natural resource.

If the Conservatives suffer an epic shellacking in May's elections to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments and English councils then the party may decide it is time for a complete reboot. But right now, Mrs Badenoch is fighting to connect with a country which polls show the overwhelming majority of voters think is going in the wrong direction.

When she steps onto the stage for her first annual conference speech as leader she has a moment to speak beyond the Manchester hall to the wider nation, and to stand a chance of saving her party she must not surrender the limelight in the months ahead. Politicians may enjoy plotting in the shadows but she must lead her party back into the arena.