Push what is falling

Kemi Badenoch has failed. Time to move on

This article was first published in The Critic. Everything I publish elsewhere is shared here for free, as a gift to the nation. But if you want the full picture, become a paid subscriber. It’s just a few quid a month; such is the price genius is reduced to.

In October last year, I wrote a piece in these most august pages called “The case for Jenrick”, with a counterbalancing case for Kemi put forward by Tim Dawson.

His argument, put simply, was that in order to capitalise on Starmer’s bad start, the Conservative Party needed a leader the public were “willing to listen to”. Kemi was that woman; brave, he argued, “willing to champion causes other politicians are afraid of”, thoughtful, fiery and aggressive, with “shimmers of humour”.

I speak not to disprove what Dawson spoke, but to speak what I do know.

Starmer’s start has not improved. Quite the opposite. After five months, he was the most unpopular Prime Minister since records began. Currently, half of the electorate think he has changed Britain for the worse. Nearly two-thirds say the country is heading in the wrong direction. Asked to give the Labour government a score out of ten for performance, the electorate gave an average of 3.5 out of 10. Nearly half (48 per cent) rate it poorly (0–3), while just 19 per cent give it a high score (7–10). Things have gotten so bad that his future is already an open question.

Circumstances are, of course, not as fortuitous as they look. Taking control over the Conservative Party after such a monumental defeat is a little like being Murat taking control of the Grand Armée after Napoleon abandoned it on the retreat from Russia. It is as long and hard a road back to power as it was to Paris; but ten months is ten months, and a full campaigning season is behind us. How much ground have we taken following the worst start to any Prime Minister’s tenure since records began?

The answer is none. Kemi inherited a polling lead, albeit of 1-2 per cent; we are now regularly polling at almost half that number. We are attempting to stave off the Lib Dems, rather than overhaul Labour — and forget about Reform, who are now regularly topping Westminster voter intention polls.

Kemi has now been in post long enough that her flaws are no longer assumptions of the opposition; they are simply flaws. She has, to paraphrase Gibbon, furnished the malice of her enemies with the arms of the truth.

Is she brave, “willing to champion causes other politicians are afraid of”? Alas, no. Kemi is attempting to build “a new model Britain”, we are told: more self-reliant, less dependent on statist solutions. Yet when the OBR warned that Labour could no longer afford the triple lock alongside rising costs for working-age benefits (with projections showing the policy will cost three times more by the end of the decade than estimated in 2012) Badenoch backed the Triple Lock without hesitation, framing her fight as one against working-age support, not pensioner entitlements.

Is she thoughtful? Certainly, we have been treated to big-picture speeches setting out conservative values. But vague platitudes do not a public intellectual make; when debates descend into the particulars, it often appears as if she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. In fact, even her record as the thoughtful and clear anti-woke warrior came into question, after she attacked diversity and inclusion training that was the direct result of a policy paper she wrote. Meanwhile we wait, patiently, endlessly, listlessly, for the long-promised policy.

Is she fiery and aggressive? Sometimes. But given she attacked Farage for falsifying Reform membership numbers and had to back down after being threatened with legal action, perhaps fire and aggression are negatives, unless tempered with prudence and judgement. People see her as aggressive, but at the cost of seeing her as likeable.

What about those shimmers of humour? Kemi Badenoch has, unarguably, been funny. In her first major interview as Leader, with the Spectator, nothing grabbed anyone as much as her comments about sandwiches. Any half-decent sketchwriter can make endless amounts of copy with her known timing challenges and fondness for Clash of Clans. Recently, the woman so fond of taking it to the trans came out to say that she no longer “identified” as Nigerian. As Will Lloyd has so eloquently captured, there is more than an air of the ridiculous about her.

All of this is by the by. The fact is that for all that Kemi fans maintain — as Daniel Johnson did, most ably, in these most august pages — that she has “competence, charisma and character in abundance”, she has already failed. She has, as I have written elsewhere, simply been outpaced: “the political time horizon no longer permits the kind of methodical, slow-burn strategy she seems to favour. Her model so far — apologising for months, gradually building the intellectual case, slowly maturing policy — belongs to a different informational age.”

A while ago, she issued a challenge to the authors of two pieces in these most august pages calling for her to resign (in The Critic? Who would have thought?) by stating that “Anonymous briefings for me are always from cowards.”

A fair comment, and one I have decided to heed. Kemi, you’re not very good at this. That I could forgive, if I felt like you were trying, but it seems like you lose half an hour in the morning and spend the rest of the day looking for it. I could forgive it, too, if I felt you were enjoying it; but every time I see you, you remind me of the spokesperson for a crumbling regime, your message intended as much to convince yourself as the audience.

The only thing keeping her in post is that her pride has not yet sunk to the level of her fortune. So I say to those few Tries who still matter; garbage time has run out. Robert Jenrick is already the unofficial Leader. Push what is falling.