If I have a view on things I try not to hide it.
Besides it being stupid in a job like this it’s just dishonest.
Hypocrisy is a weakness in politics and I’d rather say something I believe and be proved wrong than hide what I believe and pretend I never thought it, at a later date when it’s inconvenient.
This is going to be a long read so buckle up but let’s start off with a basic. Yes, I do like Kemi Badenoch. I like her brand of unfiltered honesty.
But honestly, when it comes to leadership of a party ‘liking’ really isn’t the point.
Do you respect them is a more pertinent and valuable question? And accordingly:
Yes, I do respect Kemi. Not least because I had doubts and she’s earned that respect.
So is it just a self interested bias?
Well let’s put cards on the table – Kemi is fond of poker, which I shall return to – most of you know I’ve been friends with Sir James Cleverly for many years, and worked at his side for two years. He stood in the leadership election that Kemi Badenoch won. Had Cleverly won it, it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility I might have had a different job. So no it’s not self-interest motivating this.
Apart from, to the disappointment of some, being scrupulously fair in our coverage of that leadership election, Cleverly did not win, and the choice put to members, of which I am one, was between Badenoch and Jenrick.
Since Labour have been forced to reveal WhatsApp messages, they’d really rather we hadn’t seen – eh Darren Jones? – here’s a sample I got at the time.
“Kemi is a gamble. She has lots of good points and quite a few flaws, but I don’t trust Jenrick’s ‘journey’”
“Neither are my sort of Conservative but if I have to choose, I think Kemi will rattle our opponents more than Rob”
“If I didn’t think it was all about him, and not much about any of us, I’d go for Rob like a shot”
I’m not naming names but these were big players in the party, nor am I sharing tittle-tattle. I post them because Kemi – and she knows this perfectly well – was not universally liked by her colleagues, and the parliamentary party seemed divided three ways by the time it came down to Badenoch, Cleverly, and Jenrick.
She knew all this when she got the job, and frankly full respect to anyone who wanted it in those circumstances, even if in losing, one of them ended up going down a disappointing path.
I liked Rob, we got on. I was often advised about the risks, but we talked. It sort of comes with the job but we were friendly. I got this very wrong but in my view at the time, if he stuck at it and worked within as the most effective Opposition attack dog, there was an ‘heir apparent’ role available when the time came. I wanted to see both work closer together and said so – it’s just Kemi knew better that his plan was to force ‘when the time came’ and that losing to her was never going to stop burning into his vast and impatient ambitions.
I still think it’s a shame he couldn’t have been a ‘force multiplier’, but I think it significant that some of those closest to him in the party remain within and are still very sore he did what he did. Few have spoken to him since.
Kemi then it was that took the reins and the crown.
One senior Tory told me why they had voted for her, I suspect switching, but that’s old history:
“I think she might have the crackle of electricity about her”
Supporters pointed to a ministerial mauling she delivered to Angela Rayner before the election: “Expect more of that” they said.
But it didn’t come.
Oh how the Guardian’s John Crace loved his smug ‘calamity Kemi’ sketches. And those of us who wanted to ‘give her a chance’ and talked of the two years it took Thatcher to earn her spurs quietly mumbled into our beers ‘she’ll get there – I hope’
At this point, both in the timeline and this article I want to raise the ‘haters’ as they are known in LOTO.
There have been since she took the job, a small group of commentators who just don’t like her, never liked her, and passed judgement from the start. Hell, one of them, and still a good friend, worked for me.
My question always was “why have you decided, so hard and so fast that she’s useless/awful/going to be booted out soon?”
I never found their answers convincing.
First there was the point that whoever got the job – and, by the way, it’s one of the worst in politics, and in her case at the worst possible time – was going to get flak, but I just couldn’t see on what sound evidence you could damn any new incumbent within a couple of months.
Some had been first out of the traps saying Liz Truss was going to be a disaster and saw the kudos of ‘calling it first’, and possibly thought they’d do it again. Some members of the public – and you don’t need to look that hard online even today – clearly didn’t like her at all. They are the people who put the word ‘Nigerian’ into any comment about her. I’m comfy ignoring such people.
She did seem to ‘disappear’ for months but then I know the party was on the verge of falling apart as an organisation. It’s still in a ropey state to be honest but she spent months trying to stitch it back together to be operational. She didn’t always make friends on the way, and it’s noticeable she has a different team around her than she did in those early days.
Some of the ‘haters’ seemed to bear an old grudge. Now here is a relevant point. Nearly everybody I know who has had dealings with Kemi over time has a story of an occasion she was less than charming, seemingly distracted or dismissive. I have one. I didn’t much like it when it happened but I go back to the point about like and respect. Nobody is perfect.
To then build a canon of work over the last eighteen months essentially rubbishing anything about her as some have done, is as journalistically lazy as saying she’s a saint or the chosen one. Neither is true.
So let’s go the other way. I’m being overly generous?
First, I’ve criticised her. I think not tackling the obvious flaw in the triple lock sits awkwardly with her sense and instincts on other areas. Her early aversion to journalists and the media was a weakness and her long given impression she doesn’t take advice, thinking she doesn’t make mistakes, was no wiser than it was also unattractive.
We waited a long time in 2025 for her to deliver the persona she has consistently shown since last Tory Conference, and it got to the point at ConHome where three essential tests presented themselves. The speech, the Budget response, and this May’s elections.
We here, knew if she flunked any of them, she would surely fall. Her only safety net was a shudder of horror in the party at the thought of being where Labour find themselves now, repeating our great mistake in government and switching horses thinking it solves systemic issues. As she says now the problem isn’t Starmer or Burnham it’s Labour.
The speech was great, the budget response was the ‘crackle of electricity’, and May’s elections were – awful.
However she passes by default on the last given the only threat of deposition has gone, she sacked him, and they just weren’t as bad (though awful) as many had feared. They still beg questions of her, and the party, let’s not deny it, but she has bought time to answer them.
At the end of this week, she is not going to be wavered by the predictions of Lee Cain, or Dominic Cummings, she’ll swat away the jibes of Zia Yusuf and her once friends and colleagues who went to Reform. Suella wasn’t sacked for complaining, something she did a lot, but because she was viewed as all talk, no action. That’s the brutal truth. The Reform advert was low, and frankly stupid.
Most times Kemi’s in action in the Commons now, it is as a gleeful CCHQ team put it recently “this is her Chamber, you’re just sitting in it”.
Not everyone likes what she says, but this week, a clearly emotional yet clear and focussed performance on the GMB sofa, rooted in something she has said for many years, and on a topic where a wrong tone could have really backfired, she gained the respect of many who would take a lot of persuading to vote for us but said they thought she had got it right.
I know from a number of sources that Nigel Farage is uncomfortable facing off with Kemi. He’d have preferred sparring with Rob – before he sat down with him and made him his new best friend. Zia is still spitting tacks about that I’m told. The reasons for Farage’s concerns are both optical and reflective. He knows she can pull it out of the bag when she needs to, and he’d need to be on his A game to best her. “Boring, Boring, Boring” won’t cut it.
My last points are practical ones, and if she’s reading this, ones that are less effusive, just realistic.
Why do I like and respect her?
First, because she’s there. There’s no other person in place who either wants it or could challenge her right now. I can’t find a single voice who wants to. So which Tory leader currently do people want me to talk about?! There’s one. It’s her. And that fact is largely down to her.
Second because I look at strategies and if they don’t make sense I don’t like them.
Majoring on the economy, focussed on holding the Government to account, understanding trust will take longer to build than you’d like and knowing – she did a video about it at the beginning for goodness sake – that her party deserved to be booted out in 2024, taking time to get things the way you want them, honest to the point of potential electoral harm, – I’m not sure I see another strategy that would work better – and it might not even work – but I have a feeling she’s playing the cards she holds, well.
A brand may be left unaided by her own popularity it’s true, but it certainly can’t be helped by an unpopular leader, and this week a leader is how she’s looked. Rather than a weak leader which Starmer has looked for some time.
I like her because her directness is actually a strength even if it’s sometimes a little too ‘extra strength’. I like her because she’s funnier than you think, and at her funniest when it’s spontaneous and unscripted. I like her because she was on the Right has always been there and hasn’t wavered despite attempts to paint her as ‘wet’ and ‘woke’ this week.
I don’t have to like her, I’m not obliged to, I’m certainly not paid to. I just do. I’m not scared of saying if she gets something wrong, either.
I respect her because she’s taken on a fantastically hard job and is now making a good go of it. I respect her because I wasn’t sure she could and I was friends with someone who wanted to do it instead of her, and she came out with the goods – in the end.
I think she’s brave, and contrary to my former belief I now know she takes advice. She scares her opponents it’s why they come for her. Her armour has got tougher; it’s started to fit her better and because: it was never about convincing me but the public and she’s starting to do that. Sadly it’s not happening yet for her party to feel the same warmth, but I trust her more now that it could happen.
She’s not held back by ‘wets’ or a cabal of closet Lib-Dems that’s hogwash and if you think it, you don’t know her, or have chosen to ignore the signs that she won’t have that.
She’s not finished doing this job, it’s not all in place yet, she still has a lot to do – a mountain to climb in fact – but the critiques of her for me still don’t hold water, or have ulterior motives behind them and if she can’t make it happen, ConHome will be there same as always to record it not happening and asking the questions why it went wrong. We won’t pull our punches. She’d not expect us to.
I’ve just been asked so many times if I like her and why, I thought I’d just be honest about it.