TThe thing to understand about Kemi Badenoch is that, for all her obvious faults, she is not stupid. In recent months, the new leader of the Conservative Party has given every sign that she and those close to her have given serious thought to her future strategy.

The question that “Kemi” is the right answer to is: “How can we unite a broken, electorally defeated, ideology-obsessed, conspiracy-addicted party?”

Without over-exaggerating the analogies, Kemi’s response is the model provided by Margaret Thatcher in opposition, from 1975 to 1979.

Thatcher also became leader after the fall of the Heath government almost exactly half a century ago and the party was battered in two successive election defeats, the latest considered one of the worst in its history.

What followed was a period of drift and confusion over what the party stood for, with the new Labor government embarking on a series of classic tax, spend and borrow initiatives (the real precursor, incidentally , starmerism). Thatcher, like Badenoch, a relatively junior member of the cabinet and not universally popular with her colleagues, challenged Heath and won the leadership, through skillful campaigning. Both could be considered “outsiders” in terms of social class and origin.

But then again, the Conservative Party has always had a knack for accommodating and promoting to leadership those with a “different” background: Disraeli the Jew, Bonar Law the Canadian, Major the Brixton boy.

What did Thatcher do next? What she did not do was invent Thatcherism and do what she was later able to do for over a decade in government. No – undoubtedly a right-wing woman who had had personal qualms about the statist instincts and interventionist tendencies of the Heath government, she felt she needed to build an inclusive shadow cabinet and craft new policies carefully and responsibly. as collegial as possible. The radical policies, the purge of the “wets” and the arrogance came much later, when she was firmly in power.

So what Kemi will do next, as she has tacitly indicated in recent months, is follow the Thatcher model as leader of the opposition – with the added, unexpected benefit of a Labor government plunging into what could be a prolonged period of intense unpopularity. .

In 1975, Thatcher felt it was wise to bring all possible talent to her team, and this was to include a mix of former Heathite colleagues and those who, in turn, had fought her for leadership after that she sent Heath into the country. first round of voting in this competition.

So Willie Whitelaw, a former devoted Heath supporter, arrived as deputy leader, with others who were ideologically opposed to him in leadership positions. James Prior, a man who believed in corporatism and incomes policy as fervently as anyone (it was anathema to Thatcher) was in charge of employment and the very first, tentative, ideas of virtually consensual union reform. Geoffrey Howe, also a candidate for the leadership, was more in tune with his thinking and became shadow chancellor. Peter Throneycroft, also closer to his views on the economy without being so right-wing, became party chairman. She even rehabilitated that ultimate corporatist, Reggie Maudling, who had a brief and unhappy stint as shadow foreign minister.

The only people she left out, or who wouldn’t join in, were Heath’s protégé, Peter Walker, and Ted himself, who then went into the longest sulk of the story. At the forefront of Thatcher, she could count only on her free-market monetarist mentor, Keith Joseph, who would have become leader if he had succeeded in curbing her instinct to express her highly logical mind.

Over the next four years, the team established policy groups and think tanks, preparing to learn from the mistakes of the government of 1970 to 1974, in which many of them had served. Their efforts resulted in the 1979 manifesto, which was vague on details. but clear on the direction of movement. Empowered by the suicidal tendencies of the Labor movement and by a Liberal Party that was self-destructing following a bizarre sex scandal, they experienced what was then the biggest swing to an opposition party since the war.

Already in Badenoch’s statements and interviews we can see that this pattern is followed.

Badenoch wants all of her leadership rivals – Jenrick, Cleverly, Stride, Tugendhat and even Patel – in her shadow cabinet (although she acknowledges they may not want the jobs she offers, which will make them usefully come across as sore losers).

In her leadership campaign she was proud to have attracted Damian Green from the One Nation wing, as well as Iain Duncan Smith from the mainstream Eurosceptic right. She says she doesn’t have all the answers (one wonders how sincerely) and wants everyone to join in on the new ideas…and then agree with her – if Thatcher is to be believed.

Maggie, like Badenoch now, has learned to curb her tendency to appear shrill and condescending, and to belie her reputation for cruelty (as in “Milk Thief Maggie Thatcher” after her cuts to release the milk at school). Badenoch, who struggles not to be dismissive, has already committed to being gentler and having fun.

But just as Thatcher clearly denounced the things the Heath government had done that were “anti-conservative”, Badenoch is not sparing in her comments about the Sunak administration. Perhaps also that of Johnson, who, according to her, “spoke on the right but governed on the left”. Constructive ambiguity has its limits.

Like Maggie Thatcher, Badenoch obviously has her own ideas about politics – and, like Thatcher, apparently a taste for the more philosophical aspects of conservatism. In Thatcher’s case, these were Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman; for Badenoch it appears to be Roger Scruton and Thomas Sowell, as revealed in an interview with Tom McTague.

But over the next few years, Badenoch will have to listen to his colleagues and compromise on policy and presentation. It’s not easy for her temperamentally, but the alternative is another round of battles in the Tories’ near-permanent civil war, the one they’ve been waging, oddly enough, ever since they defenestrated Margaret Thatcher in 1990, at which point she would have lost all the safeguards, power went to her head and she really reverted to an autocratic type.

If all goes well for Badenoch, she will cautiously come to power around 2028 or 2029, aided by a struggling Labor government, and her first cabinet will be a thoroughly reassuring and balanced affair. Then, over the course of the 2030s, a series of Badenoch administrations will gradually but radically reform and regenerate the nation, shrinking the state so that, as Badenoch already explains, it does less but better. And then, around 2040, they will turn on Kemi for his blatant “extremism” and abrasive “style of government,” and the ridiculous conservative civil war may resume.

What do they say about history repeating itself?