The Kemi Badenoch bandwagon crashed into political reality last week. For several months, Conservative cheerleaders have pushed a narrative that their heroine is a strategic genius who will salvage their party after its near-death experience at the last general election. Buoyed by a bump in her personal ratings, they brushed aside a string of awful election results, culminating in fifth place in the recent Manchester mayoral battle when they were beaten even by the bigots of Restore. But then came her strident defence of a Tory council candidate who was a convicted neo-Nazi – only for him to quit amid a storm of outrage led by a victim of his anti-Semitic brutality.
Critics pointed out Badenoch, shifting the Tories hard right, embraced a convicted racist but stopped former party chairman Sir Grant Shapps from standing, kicked out a former Downing Street chief of staff for criticising her leadership and purged candidates who support their own former policies on net zero. She did not help her cause with a hopeless radio interview, insulting every councillor in the land by claiming they just “look at parking and sorting out bins” and then saying she was “sceptical” about rehabilitation. But the Tory leader is, typically, continuing to fight – so authored an intriguing article in The Sunday Times headlined “We must believe offenders can be rehabilitated” in defence of her stance.
