Kemi Badenoch might have avoided the cursed 52%-48% ratio that has riven the Conservative party before, but the nevertheless close-run nature of her 56.5% winning margin in the Tory members’ vote shows the scale of the task before her.
It is hard to overstate the challenges Rishi Sunak’s replacement faces, even setting aside the much-cited fact that the last new UK leader to take a party directly from losing office and back to government was Margaret Thatcher in 1979.
