Leader of the Opposition in the United Kingdom, Kemi Badenoch, has vowed to ‘fight on’ despite the Conservative Party losing its popularity ahead of the upcoming local elections.

Badenoch, in a report by UK journal, The Telegraph, says she has no plans to throw in the towel with the Tories facing heavy losses during the elections scheduled for May 2026.

“This time five years ago, the Conservatives were polling around 40 per cent. The vaccine rollout was proceeding at pace, and Boris Johnson was still capitalising on the post-Brexit realignment. His party gained 235 seats in the local elections that spring,” the report read.

“Fast forward to today, and the picture is almost unrecognisable. Stephen Fisher, a political scientist, suggests the Tories could lose as many as 1,000 seats next month, a reversal so stark it borders on historic.

“But, as Dr Stephen Davies, a historian, warned: “May will be equally bad – if not worse, given higher exposure in areas such as London for Labour.”

With the odds appearing to be in favour of the Labour Party, Badenoch is, however, not giving and the tenacious leader of the Conservative Party has vowed to ‘fight on’ no matter what happens in May.

According to The Telegraph, Badenoch who is, according to one poll, now the United Kingdom’s most popular party leader has much in her favour: eloquent, tenacious, unafraid of confrontation.

She demonstrated an ease with voters that is hard to fake, when she met with The Telegraph’s reporters in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, earlier this week, where she was out campaigning.

“People consider me distinct from the problems of the last parliament,” she said. “They know I was not the cause of what went wrong, they may even remember I was fighting for them on the issues they care about.”

Also at the local election launch last week, the Conservative MP for North West Essex declared: “The Conservative Party is coming back.

“It is absurd [to suggest I would be replaced],” she said. “I am going to fight on. I don’t know of any party leader who has decided that, following a local election result, they would throw in the towel.

“What kind of person would I be if I just gave up? It’s hardly what voters want, either. We had many leadership contests before I came in, and a fat lot of good that did us. People want consistency.”