The Conservatives will only be taken seriously when they are honest about their multiple mistakes in government

No one who knows her describes Kemi Badenoch as a politician who is much troubled by self doubt. Yet the manner of her victory in the Tory leadership contest ought to give a worm of unease to the party’s new standard bearer. When the result came in on Saturday morning, the first reveal was that the membership of the Tory party has shrunk to 131,680, down more than 40,000 since the last contest two years ago. With the turnout also down on last time, she won with the support of just four in 10 of that shrivelled membership. Her lustiest cheerleaders cannot describe this as an emphatic victory. Even the truest of blues were not greatly impressed by the choice on offer for all the effort that she and Robert Jenrick put into trying to pander to their party’s prejudices on the constituency association dinner circuit. Never have so many rubber chickens died in vain.

This lack of enthusiasm was also evident during the preliminary rounds when it was Tory MPs doing the voting. In the final ballot of Conservative parliamentarians, it was virtually a three-way tie between the former business secretary, Mr Jenrick and James Cleverly. The new Tory leader takes charge with a tepid endorsement from her party’s members, two-thirds of her parliamentary colleagues preferring someone else and prominent names declaring that they have no desire to serve in her shadow cabinet. This is not so much a coronation as a hospital pass. A brittle mandate means she will be treated as an interim chief on probation with a party that will be impatient for results and is infamous for its factionalism and its disloyalty. The sixth leader of her party in a decade, she’s going to have to play a difficult hand with much more dexterity than she’s previously demonstrated if she’s not to be yet another Tory head whose grip on the job is fleeting.