Britain's opposition Conservatives are gathering for their annual get-together hopeful they are back in the fight to represent the right, with rivals Reform UK hit by a donations row.
Last year, commentators openly questioned the future existence of the UK's most successful and oldest political party as it slumped in surveys following its historic 2024 election defeat.
But a decline in support for Reform as its leader Nigel Farage faces intense scrutiny over financial gifts sees Kemi Badenoch's Tories meet in Birmingham, central England, enjoying a mini revival.
Badenoch was bullish in her opening speech to the party conference on Sunday.
"When we win the next election -- and we will -- we are going to need to hit the ground running," she said to applause.
"Reports of the death of the Conservative Party now look premature," political scientist Tim Bale, an expert on right-wing politics in Britain, told AFP.
The Conservative Party was founded in the 1830s, going on to produce such political behemoths as Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.
It has won more general elections and returned the most prime ministers of any modern-day UK political party.
The Tories were in government for an 18-year stretch between 1979 and 1997 and 14 years from 2010 to 2024.
But in the July 2024 election, won by a Labour Party then led by Keir Starmer, the Conservatives were reduced to just 121 lawmakers in Britain's 650-seat parliament.
It was their worst defeat in a general election ever.
The loss was punishment for years of chaos and infighting that followed the 2016 Brexit referendum, including Boris Johnson's scandal-tainted premiership and his successor Liz Truss's disastrous budget.
The Conservatives' standing fell further in 2025 as Farage's hard-right upstarts opened up huge leads in opinion polls, with one survey suggesting the Tories could be reduced to just 45 MPs.
But a police investigation into allegations of illegal donations and a parliamentary sleaze probe into a £5-million ($6.7-million) gift to Farage has dented the anti-immigration party's appeal.
Reform, which along with Farage denies wrongdoing, is also under pressure from Restore Britain, a party further to the right which has received the backing of US tech billionaire Elon Musk.
A recent YouGov poll of some 17,000 Britons projected that if an election was held today the Conservatives would finish second on 130 seats, behind a rejuvenated Labour now headed by Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
Reform would take 123 seats, a massive increase on its eight seats currently, but only enough for third place.
"It's a very small revival that the Conservatives are enjoying," David Jeffery, a senior lecturer in British politics at the University of Liverpool, told AFP.
"They're doing better than they've done in the last year and a half. But they're still about four points behind ... (the 24 percent vote share) they had at the (2024) general election," he said.
While Reform and the left-wing Greens were the biggest winners at local elections in May, the Conservatives enjoyed some gains in London and won a parliamentary by-election in June.
In September, YouGov said Farage's net favourability rating had plummeted 14 points in the past year while Badenoch's had soared 20 points -- although both remain in negative territory overall.
"It's too early to talk about a 'Kemi-naissance' although the Tories and their allies in the media are keen to create some momentum," said Bale.
"Their ratings have improved lately but mainly because Reform's have begun to drop."
Badenoch, 46, has ruled out a pact with Reform, which adopts a tougher stance on immigration and climate change policy and now boasts ex-Conservative ministers Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman in its ranks.
"When I said I was going to renew the Conservative Party, I meant it," she said in her conference speech.
But a deal could happen after the election, which Burnham says will be in 2029, if it means they are able to form a coalition or minority government, notes Bale.
Ironically, a stronger Conservative Party at the expense of Reform likely represents good news for Labour.
"It would split the right-wing vote in a whole bunch of constituencies that Labour would then be able to hold on to," he said.