What amazing changes a year can bring. At the time of the Tory Party conference 12 months ago, Kemi Badenoch was being written off by politicians of all parties, including her own, and by many in the media.

She was said to be abrasive, lazy, shallow, inexperienced and not up to the job. I had some qualms myself, though I don’t think I gave vent to them.

Her reputation has soared in a remarkably short period. She regularly got the better of a leaden Keir Starmer in the Commons, and comes across as strong, good-humoured and principled.

Kemi’s personal ratings are high – much higher than those of her party, which has advanced only minimally in the polls despite Labour’s tribulations and Reform UK’s self-inflicted wounds. And there’s the rub.

But before we consider that concerning contradiction, let me flesh out the nature of her achievement. For many she is the first true Tory leader of the party since Margaret Thatcher was defenestrated by lily-livered scoundrels nearly 36 years ago.

We have endured countless disappointments from pragmatists and trimmers carrying a tattered Conservative banner who often seemed indistinguishable from their Labour opponents.

With the Maastricht Treaty, John Major took us closer to the heart of the European Union with as much zeal as Tony Blair demonstrated after becoming prime minister in 1997.

I’ll skip over William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard, because none of them achieved power, and alight on David Cameron. His greatest hero appears to have been Blair.

Where does one start? With Cameron’s claptrap about the ‘Big Society’ and his being photographed hugging huskies? Or the sharp increase in taxes for the better-off on his watch? Or the intensification of a futile war in Afghanistan, which cost so many British lives and so much treasure?

Of all his sins I might settle on his resolve to raise foreign aid to the highest of any major economy while denying extra funds to the under-resourced British Armed Forces. This showboating continued after Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014.

And then there was mass immigration, which reached new highs during Cameron’s prime ministership, though the Tories managed to set breathtaking all-time records in the post-Covid years.

Nor should we forget the headlong rush to Net Zero at the expense of economic growth, which the Conservative Party pursued until its defeat in July 2024. Labour, of course, has been even more misguided.

Kemi Badenoch, who became an MP in 2017 and a junior minister in 2019, was associated with these failures. One of her best qualities is her open admission of past errors by her party, from which she doesn’t seek to escape responsibility.

This is a theme in a booklet called The Right Way, published yesterday as the Tory Party conference opened in Birmingham. It unashamedly models itself on The Right Approach, produced by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives in 1976.

Thatcher, let’s remember, was in her early days dismissed by some in her party in similar terms to those once used to denigrate Kemi. She was said to be a limited, if practical, woman. What her critics missed was her extraordinary ability to learn and develop. Sounds familiar?

Kemi doesn’t sugarcoat the Tories’ 14 years in power.

She writes: ‘Britain’s problems did not begin with the 2024 Labour Government. Some began under earlier Labour governments and became worse under Conservative ones.’

She is thinking of the defects I’ve alluded to: ever-higher taxes and welfare payments; wildly uncontrolled immigration; and a reckless, headlong rush towards Net Zero that damages economic growth, though she rightly concedes the reality of climate change.

Although specific policies are discussed, The Right Way is primarily a restatement of principles that have been shoved to the margins by a succession of Tory leaders.

The malaise, writes Kemi, is both economic and cultural. ‘Responsibility has been drained away from individuals, families, businesses and communities by a state that grows not because the public wants it but because fewer and fewer things are expected to happen without it.’

There is nothing very original about The Right Way, yet it is a necessary restatement of old truths, and it lifted my heart. How different from Andy Burnham’s preposterous invocation last week of the 1970s as a golden age, although in fact it was a time of defeat, discord and despair.

Sadly, even sensible people have been affected by the collectivist values of our age. One example: yesterday the BBC implicitly criticised Kemi’s promise to extend free childcare to couples who earn more than £100,000 a year.

I admit to being momentarily taken in by the Beeb’s insinuation that this was a concession to the rich. Of course it isn’t. The present arrangements are a disincentive to work. Those who go over the £100,000 threshold suddenly have to find many thousands more. Why bother?

It’s one of many examples of growth-destroying measures (this one introduced by the Tories in 2017) that sap the spirit of enterprise. Clever of Kemi to identify it – or maybe it was the new Shadow Chancellor, Andrew Griffith, a successful businessman who knows his onions.

Let’s hope Badenoch and Griffith will soon have the courage to say they’ll jettison the detested inheritance tax, as has been intimated they will. Such a move would be greeted with joy by most people, including those who have no immediate prospect of paying this pernicious levy on money that has already been taxed.

I’ve little doubt this will be Kemi’s week, and that she will be celebrated by Tories who have longed for the kind of policies she is embracing. Her greatest triumph is that she has moved her party decisively to the Right with only frail cries of protest from the Tory Left.

But I must return to the snag I’ve mentioned – the grit in the oyster, the thorn in the flesh. Kemi may be increasingly popular and respected but her party scarcely is. The reason is surely obvious.

People remember the endless, disappointing Tory years, and some of them find in Reform a robust and politically unsullied alternative. For all her gifts, Kemi cannot wish away Nigel Farage.

Reform may be wounded by financial scandals but its message of hope will continue to appeal to millions of disenchanted voters, assisted by the £72million that has just been donated by two billionaires.

Kemi is an astute woman, and she must know in her heart that there’s no prospect of her refashioned Conservatives beating Andy Burnham’s Labour Party by themselves. She apologises for the Tories’ past errors but many can’t forgive them.

She recently said that a deal with Reform would be ‘monstrous’. This sounds extreme, though one can understand that while she has been rebuilding her party any talk of an accommodation with Farage would be seen as a sign of weakness.

Yet there’s no other way. Of course, it takes two to tango. Unless Nigel Farage shows equal statesmanship there can be no deal, and this country will be ruined by an interminable age of incompetent socialist government.

Kemi Badenoch has had a wondrous year but all her achievements will turn to dust and ashes unless the divided Right finds a way of coming together.