At the end of 2008, Ford Motor Company was only months from running out of cash. It had a lackluster product lineup and a dys­functional culture of infighting, backstabbing, and excuses. Sound familiar? Kemi Badenoch has been reading about how under the leadership of a bold new CEO, Alan Mulally, the company came back from the brink and returned it to one of the world’s most successful carmakers.

That, she has told her MPs, is inspiring her model for the Conservative Party.

After another strong outing at PMQs – skewering Sir Keir Starmer for “stuffing government with paedophile apologists” – Badenoch headed to her office for lunch. Unusually for her, one that included sandwiches (though she opted for a ham and cheese croissant). She has been hosting a series of these meetings with her MPs, and this week it was the first of two sessions with members of the 2024 intake.

Badenoch explained that Mulally’s insight at Ford Motors was realising the company had become distracted by its luxury brands like Aston Martin, rather than focusing on Ford itself and what it originally did so well. Her own lesson was similar: invest in the party’s “stakeholder products” — the core Tory vote, what it wants, and what the Conservatives can credibly offer.

And she wants a “fresh” Conservative Party to do so, with a Tory insider saying “Kemi told them she wanted these new MPs to be the future face of the Tory party”. It went down well with the group, some of whom have recently been getting their first outings at the despatch box like Peter Fortune.

He understood Badenoch’s Ford comparison, I’m told, likening the Conservative Party to a failing business: first stop the crisis, then stabilise, and then rebuild. Right now, he suggested, the party is still in the early stages. 

As discussion ranged around the Leader of the Opposition’s office, MPs aired familiar frustrations and enecuragements. John Cooper urged the party to “get onto talking about the economy” as the route back to power, while still addressing the wound of immigration. Joe Robertson argued for a “more optimistic tone in how the party communicates” and “not just criticising the government”. Inevitably, the conversation drifted to the question that always arises when talk turns to renewal and making Badenoch’s New Conservatives: what to do about the past.

Both Lewis Cocking and Greg Stafford, I’m told, commented about the shadow cabinet. There were “too many faces reminding people of the last government”, and it being “frankly not very good”, with some not pulling their weight.

They are not alone. One LOTO figure told me: “Real surgery is needed at the top of the shadow cabinet – we’re talking the three great offices of state: Treasury, Foreign and Home.” That would mean shadow chancellor Mel Stride, shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel and shadow home secretary Chris Philp.

A senior Tory agrees in principle but not without caveats. “Every change has a cost,” they said. “What do you offer Mel and Priti? They’re already knighted and with a damehood. The Lords is an option, but that’s a way off.” One shadow cabinet member confided: “It needs to happen, though I fear it won’t any time soon.” Another said movement was inevitable, but only once Badenoch herself reaches that conclusion.

The argument for change is the freshness Badenoch has begun championing. “In the top jobs,” one shadow minister says, “we shouldn’t be so tainted by the past.” Patel, in particular, attracts criticism. Her association with the ‘Boriswave’ – an issue raised at this week’s lunch – and her robust defence of that record in a disastrous interview with Harry Cole are cited as reasons she should move on.

But she is loyal, and loyalty counts. “Kemi is very loyal and appreciates it,” one insider says. Another shadow cabinet colleague tells me they are “very keen for Tom Tugendhat to come into the fold,” and I’m told discussions have taken place, and may yet happen in the future.

When it comes to Philp those around him acknowledge “improvement in the job”, an “eagerness to get the message out”, and a grasp of deteialed Home Office legisaltion. Other colleagues say that same eagerness “comes across as too intense” and “doesn’t land well” with the public.

“The Home Office is such a vulnerability for Labour that we need our absolute top performer there,” one insider says. “Unfortunately, he probably isn’t.”

Stride, meanwhile, has two camps of defenders and detractors. Supporters describe him as offering “steadiness and reassurance” on the economy. Critics complain he lacks “punch” and “fight”. Polling has the Conservatives once again trusted most on the economy, which his allies say reflects his steady approach and resistance to gimmicks. “He has rare experience of both business and the Treasury,” one Tory notes. “That’s a big risk to give up.” Those less convinced argue he is “not dynamic enough” of a choice and “doesn’t cut through”.

Stride hosted a dinner for MPs at his London home on Tuesday, shoes removed at the front door, lubricated by wine and Vesper martinis “that would kill a horse”. Some attendees wondered whether it was an exercise in wooing. One guest told me: “I suspect Mel was doing a bit of self-promotion given rumours about a reshuffle.” But I understand the dinner was arranged weeks ago, part of a tradition he has maintained since 2011.

A Tory source, however, pours water on the suggestion of any movement: “There isn’t a reshuffle, let’s put it to bed. It is not going on, the idea is nonsense. It’s just not going to happen. Kemi is very happy with her top team.” They pointed to Badenoch’s leadership, new policies, and Nick Timothy’s arrival in the shadow cabinet as evidence of renewal. “Kemi has massively changed the party under her new leadership,” they added.

Both Stride and Philp are regularly in the top three of ConservativeHome’s members’ poll, with them coming second and third respectively at last publication.

Even at last night’s Winter Ball at The Peninsula hotel, Badenoch spoke warmly of “the team”, namechecking Stride and Helen Whately on welfare savings, and praising Claire Coutinho and Andrew Bowie for fighting for British jobs in energy.

Still, the question remains: how to balance experience with renewal. For a leader promising a fresh start, there is a sense that too much of the old guard lingers at the top. As one attendee at Badenoch’s lunch put it: “The mood is different. Things feel positive. But we need to look like we’re renewing – not just talk about it.”

Another framed it more philosophically: “Fresh is what Conservatives should always be. Things should be better tomorrow than they are today. That’s the Tory way.”

Whether Badenoch can pull off a Ford-style turnaround – rescuing and rebranding a damaged political entity – is the real test of her leadership.

Director Simon Draper apparently put the hour-long documentary together with iPhone footage, having initially hoped to create a podcast centred around Miriam.

However, the candid footage was later used to create Miriam Margolyes Made Me Me, which will air on the BBC later this year, and explores the friendship between the two pals and collaborators.

Simon told the US outlet: “I thought getting Miriam Margolyes to make a podcast would be easy, after all, everyone’s doing them, but Miriam’s lifestyle is bonkers.

“In two years, we made just five episodes, but hanging out with her was life-changing. Mim’s a woman with strong opinions and a weak bladder, and I feel lucky to have been able to capture all the chaos and sparkle of the bravest, most honest person I know.”

Conor Boyle is a young conservative and unionist from Northern Ireland, an Oxford graduate, and now works in the financial services sector.

Civil service reform used to be a topic reserved for genuine political anoraks, and A-Level politics teachers, but if we want the country to succeed, it’s going to have to become an issue on all our lips.

The permanent system of government in the United Kingdom is often heralded as a model of good administration.

We’re told that the British model is the ‘Rolls Royce” Civil Service, capable of governing a vast global Empire and achieving some heroic feats. This is all very much in the past. And the issues with today’s civil service are the major roadblocks to a building a more successful, prosperous, efficient Britain. The are, to my mind, two serious problems. The first is the mentality and culture of our bureaucracy, and the second is the inability to do anything about it.

On the civil service themselves, without being impolite to our public servants, but I highly doubt many of the current crop would have made it in the days when Wellington or Disraeli were running the British Government. I have heard commentators from Tony Young to Dominic Cummings lay the decline in calibre of our public servants at the feet of the push to remove the aristocracy (who they argue felt a mitral burden of duty and service to the country) in favour of a merit-based system unveiled after the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms.

I’m not sure how much there is to this theory, I don’t propose to explore it further. My initial gripe is that, at the moment, we don’t have a meritocratic civil service, and culture turns away good, able, energetic young people before they reach senior positions. This is undoubtedly true. Seventy years ago, let’s say, the top graduates of our great universities would bite your hand off for a job in the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence, and many more government departments and agencies alike.

While may talented youngsters are, of course, still applying to become diplomats and what-not, it is no longer the case that the civil service attracts talent on a scale even close to the private sector. Consider that, a century ago, the type of young person being recruited for the likes of Stripe or SpaceX, seen a career in the Home Civil Service as having a greater level attractiveness to a private venture.

Now, it’s not even close.

Never-mind the super and futuristic companies mentioned above, the Civil Service can’t even compete with the relatively run-of-the-mill private sector jobs in London and the South-east. Part of this is money, of course (although, not if you subscribe to the argument about aristocrats and their love of service) but it’s also something deeper; the feeling that you’ll achieve something, be part of something special or important in a fast-paced private sector role; whereas in the civil service there is a perception – borne out by reality these days – that your job would be to push the pen and watch a managed decline.

Now, there will be a sort-of chicken and egg argument here about which caused which. Did the civil service stop attracting the best and brightest because Britain is no longer a great power, or did we stop being a great power because the talent intake dried up. The answer to that question I do not have, but I’m not sure that’s even the most important point.

The point is that the current civil service cannot hold a candle to its former self, and the country is suffering as a result. Readers who are alive in modern Britain will not need a reminder of this. Infrastructure projects don’t get built, or when they do, they’re very late and more costly than ‘anticipated’, the government can’t manage large data sets without losing some of it, there’s no joined-up or long-term thinking when it comes to procurement, the services provided are inefficient and the negotiating skill leaves a lot to be desired.

The reason for all of this, in my view, is the lack of a proper incentive structure. On the one hand, it appears nearly impossible to be dismissed from the civil service for not being very good, and there appears to be no consequences for catastrophic failure. On the other, there is neither the political will nor the public appetite to provide large rewards for a job done really well.

It seems to be an unfortunate truth that civil servants can fail upwards.

Doing the job, having held the very eminent position, is an achievement in itself. It’s the sort of London dinner party mentality that says, “ooh what an impressive title he’s got”. Despite the fact that the public have been broadly unimpressed by the performance of the NHS for the last ten or fifteen years, all permanent secretaries in the Department of Health leave with not only their generous pension package, but with a knighthood.

The gong, which ought to be awarded for having done something good, worthwhile or impressive, is merely a perk of the job, regardless of how well or badly the job is actually done. This is surely bizarre.

The other big problem is the political impossibility of changing any of this.

Any notion of substantial reform to the civil service is met with the howls of derision, and firm clutching of pearls.

The high-pitched screeches of “politicization” can be heard from all directions. To me, this is a sort of luxury belief that merely exists to ensure that entrenched interests aren’t disrupted by the will of the voters if they prove too radical. Just a few years ago I might’ve called that view a conspiracy theory, but I believe it’s as clear as day now. In the early twentieth century, a Labour government would’ve complained that the Whitehall mandarin was obstructing their programme, and the civil service was broadly a soft-Tory institution.

Today, the civil service would probably be described accurately as socially liberal, fairly internationalist/multilateralist and somewhat Keynesian in their economic philosophy. Obviously, this is painting with a broad brush, and I want to avoid the claim often made some on the right that the civil service is rabidly left wing or anything of the sort. I don’t think there’s much malign intent here, just a relatively common “do-gooder” attitude to the politics. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s a perfectly legislate world view.

The problem is that it stays constant in the heart of the British government even as the voters opt for a different direction of government from election to election. It is bizarre to me that “politicized” carries such weight as an insult, surely we want the officials implementing government policies to be invested in the policies’ success.

As such, I would be in favour of a new system which allowed ministers to appoint senior civil servants to oversee the implementation of the Government’s programme, including Permanent Secretaries. Minister should have trusted advisers who also believe in the mission they are carrying out. I believe there are lots of benefits that would come from this.

Firstly, I think the quality of our public discourse would be enhanced markedly because think tanks would be empowered and become a much more important institution in British politics. This is because, when a party is in opposition, the would-be political appointees in the civil service will not be employed by the state and so would take up roles in think tanked which are broadly aligned to their political masters’ tastes.

For instance, young, smart thinkers on the right would spend these years in the likes of the Institute for Economic Affairs, Adam Smith Institute, or the Centre for Policy Studies, building up the knowledge and intricate detail of policy and implementation. As the think tanks grow stronger with high calibre, passionate, intakes, their production of research, papers, memos will be strengthened. As such, on both sides, our politicians will be well-armed with the facts, arguments and intuition for all of the policy ideas that are floating around our political system.

Secondly, the state will be better run with outsiders and true believers being responsible for policy. Under this type of regime, civil servants could properly be held to account in front of Parliament, because the old rules would no longer apply. This means that those responsible for projects that go wrong can be dismissed forthwith. Most importantly, ministers will, for the first time in decades, be in control of their departments. Currently, as I see it, a Minister of the Crown is a glorified press secretary for their department who answers to the press and on the floor of the House of Commons. The tortured metaphor of “pulling the lever but nothing working” would be consigned to the dustbin of history, because ministers would be directing officials who are loyal to the Government’s policy programme. The institutional power base of the Civil Service, which is considerable to say the least, will be significantly weakened by the ability of a minister to appoint trusted confidants to positions within the command structure of a department.

It is always the political moderates in our society today – the Lib Dems, Tory wets and the New Labour crowd – who are most appalled by this idea. It’s the sort of people (and their voters) who stand to lose most from a government with a radical vision (in any ideological direction). Thus, the compliant about “politicizing” the civil service is one they make rather disingenuously. Currently, I would argue that the administrative state is akin to a Blairite think tank. The political bias of the current system suits them nicely. It’s not that they’re trying to protect a truly neutral system. What I’m proposing is to simply make the political bias more open and honest, so that no one is under any illusions or pretences.

It goes without saying that this more radical reform can only come after getting the basics right. Restore appointment and promotion based on ability alone, removing any quotas or requirement on the basis of immutable characteristics, looking beyond university graduates alone for top jobs, end promotion and pay policy based on seniority or length of service in favour of a performance-based system, and begin the long-overdue process of downsizing much of the Civil Service to reduce overmanning.

This is necessary, so that decisions taken by Governments are implemented without needless layers of bureaucracy and second-guessing by well-meaning officials. And when the policy is delivered, its success or failure can be judged, and decision-makers held to account. This is good for democracy. This is good for Britain.

David Rose is Policy and Research Director of the Free Speech Union.

 The Free Speech Union has long been concerned that the Government’s plan to issue an official definition of Islamophobia – or ‘anti-Muslim hostility’, as leaks suggest it has been re-named – will, if adopted, gravely threaten freedom of expression.

Announcing her appointment of a five person “Working Group” tasked to produce it in February last year, the then-Communities Secretary Angela Rayner insisted it would be non-statutory, and hence “compatible” with free speech rights. Our Director, Lord Young, disagreed, arguing it would lead to self-censorship and the restriction of lawful discourse by both private and public bodies. He also pointed out that discrimination and hate crimes against Muslims are already sanctioned by the civil and criminal law. Any definition would thus either be pointless, or it would threaten freedom of speech.

Such a definition is a longstanding demand made by Islamist organisations with which successive UK governments have had a policy of non-engagement, such as the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND), thanks to the extremist views expressed by some of their leaders, such as support for Hamas and other militant groups.

However, as I point out in Anti-Free Speech Hostility: The Islamist Links of the Government’s Working Group on Islamophobia, an investigative FSU briefing published today, it turns out that all the Working Group members have had close links to Islamist individuals or organisations, including the Group’s Chair, the former Tory attorney-general Dominic Grieve KC.

In a letter to Angela Rayner in June, Young raised a further, worrisome issue: that although Rayner claimed that the Group had been chosen to reflect  “a wide range of perspectives”, four of its members had already expressed strong support for an earlier definition, that issued by the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims in 2018. Its somewhat indigestible text  – that Islamophobia is “rooted in racism and a type of racism that targets expressions of  or perceived Muslimness” – was widely condemned by liberal and feminist Muslims, who said it would be weaponised by authoritarians to prevent both criticism of Islam and the highlighting of issues such as the disproportionately Muslim heritage of members of child sex grooming gangs. No one on Rayner’s Group shares that view.

Grieve, the only member of the Group who is not a Muslim, wrote a supportive Foreword to the APPG’s 2018 report. In coming to favour an official definition, he appears to have changed his views to a significant extent, although he denies this.

Yet until 2013, Grieve made a series of strong statements about Muslims’ religious and political attitudes, claiming, for example, that Muslims were trying to change society in ways that were inimical to pluralist democracy. He argued then that what he termed “political correctness” and “identity politics” arising from multiculturalism posed a serious threat to free speech and civil society. He told me he regarded his past and present views as consistent, saying the linking thread was his desire to reduce Muslims’ alienation from public life. Nevertheless, it is a matter of record that he said nothing supportive of an official  definition until 2017, when he chaired a “citizens’ commission” on British Muslims in 2017.

Its report, The Missing Muslims, thanked the then-head of the MCB as a key adviser, while its consultative “Muslim leadership group” included further MCB and MEND luminaries – including Sahar al-Faifi, MEND’s organiser in Wales, who had blamed the London Bridge terrorist attack that killed 11 people on “pro-Zionists, pro-war individuals such as Robert Rosenkranz, Lord Ashcroft and Lord Kalms the owner of Dixons”. She had also tweeted support for Hamas.

The other Working Group members also have questionable links. Asha Affi, billed by Rayner as an “independent consultant”, stood as a council candidate for the far-left, Islamist-aligned Respect Party in 2010. For the previous five years, Respect’s highest-profile figure had been an MP for the borough where Affi stood — its sometime leader George Galloway, Saddam Hussein’s erstwhile admirer and  an outspoken defender of the Iranian and former Syrian regimes. He had also praised the Hezbollah terrorist group, saying in 2009 he wanted to “glorify” because it was “right to fight Zionist terror”.

Group member Akeela Ahmed has long suggested that discourse must be regulated by the state to protect Muslims from harm. In 2018, as Young noted in his letter to Rayner, Ahmed told the APPG that the Islamophobia definition it was then considering must have “legal power”, so that it could be “implemented by the Government and the police”.

Meanwhile Ahmed has for years worked closely with Miqdaad Versi,  the head of the MCB’s media monitoring unit, trying to block “Islamophobic” journalism. Last year she set up a new body that aims to engage with government, the British Muslim Network. Working with her was its then and current co-Chair, Qari Asim, a Sunni imam who was sacked by the last Tory government for attempting to restrict free speech after supporting protests against the film Our Lady of Heaven, which takes a Shia perspective on Islam. He has also cultivated relationships with Pakistani imams who support the death penalty for blasphemy and venerate the killer of the liberal former Punjab governor Salman Taseer, and arranged speaking tours for them in England.

Ahmed is also chief executive of the British Muslim Trust, a newly-established organisation that last July was awarded government grants worth £2.65 million by Rayner’s department – to assist victims of Islamophobia. This followed a campaign against the previous recipient of such funding, Tell MAMA, which was founded and led by Fiyaz Mughal, a fierce critic of Islamists. The campaign embraced critical articles in the left-wing Byline Times by Akeela’s husband Nafeez, and speeches in the Lords by another Working Group member, Baroness Shaista Gohir, who claimed – without adducing evidence – that Tory governments had “used” Tell MAMA to monitor extremists, not support victims of hate crime.

As for Gohir, in 2014 she posted tweets supportive of Hamas, and her son, who ran her parliamentary office until last year, claimed Israel fabricated evidence of the Hamas massacre of 7th October 2023. She too supported the APPG definition, and authored a report saying that to discuss the Muslim heritage of child sex grooming gangs is Islamophobic.

The last Group member, Javed Khan, runs Equi, a think tank that published a report last year arguing that “misinformation’” about Muslims should be combatted by the state.

In September 2025, together with Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s former first minister, Khan was one of two keynote speakers at the launch of the UK branch of an international organisation based in Turkey, the Muslim Impact Forum (MIF), which has close ties to the  Islamist regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. At the time Khan spoke, the MIF’s website had for months been featuring an interview with Asim Qureshi, the Policy Director of CAGE, the terrorist prisoners’ support group, who once described Mohammed Emwazi, the ISIS executioner better known as “jihadi John”, as a “beautiful young man”. In his MIF interview, Qureshi said he hoped to build support for destroying the “evil” state of Israel once and for all, since it “should not be allowed to exist”.

Meanwhile, Labour continues to haemorrhage support to the electoral umbrella group known as The Muslim Vote, whose leaders include key figures from the MCB and MEND. The Government is running scared: a TMV rival slashed Wes Streeting’s once huge majority in 2024 to barely 500, and as he noted in his published texts to Peter Mandelson, it is likely that Labour will lose both its seats in his east London borough, Ilford. Meanwhile in Gorton and Denton, TMV is backing the Green candidate, and its influence may prove decisive.

The cause of free speech faces a daunting battle.

How parents can support anxious teens

What not to do when supporting your teen with anxiety

So, why are girls more likely to fly under the radar in terms of diagnosis?

1. There is a gender divide in how ADHD symptoms are expressed

2. Social expectations can play a part

3. Girls seem to develop sophisticated masking strategies

4. Girls are likely to be diagnosed with sleep problems or mental health conditions before ADHD

What needs to change?