No amount of sliding in the polls can shake Kemi Badenoch’s self-belief – or alter her party’s direction | Andy Beckett
Sometimes, huge confidence is a very useful, self-fulfilling quality: persuading party colleagues, activists, donors and voters that more can be achieved than is usually thought possible.
Key points
- Such utter conviction can keep everyone believing while the actual practicalities of a political project are worked out.
- The politician may be revealed as disastrously complacent and lacking in judgment, having delusions of grandeur, or being fundamentally in denial.
- Yet when an air of absolute certainty turns out to be overconfidence, the bubble bursts.
Two years in to her leadership, Badenoch continues to take the Tories ever-rightwards, into comfort-zone Conservatism What happens to a political leader who is too sure of themself?
Especially in our era of online mockery and instinctive contempt for politicians, an overconfident leader can end up as a laughing stock.
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