How Kemi Badenoch just proved she has the star quality to lead Conservative fightback
Kemi Badenoch needs to capitalise on a strong performance in the Budget debate
It was the Cheerios line that did it for me. In a blistering Budget response with more sass than a season of Chicago, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch tore into Rachel Reeves.
“I interrupt your Cheerios to bring you this frightening message about income tax,” she said, swinging her hips and adopting a high-pitched voice to mimic the Chancellor’s breakfast time Downing Street briefing a fortnight ago when she floated the prospect of an income tax rise and quickly discovered it would be a career-ending manifesto-buster. Like the Moai of Easter Island, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper joined Ms Reeves in solidarity with a line of unblinking stony faces.
With enough one-liners for a run at the Pleasance, it must have been excruciating for the Chancellor. Not just to see her Budget exposed for the hopeless capitulation to Labour’s hard-left, rebel socialist wing that it was − ripping up last year’s promise about no more tax increases or threshold freezes, after she ripped up the manifesto promise about no increased national insurance − but to be eviscerated by someone now sharper of mind and more agile on her feet than she could ever hope to be.
With 24 hours to think about it, on the Thursday morning media rounds Ms Reeves could only defend herself against charges of serial deception with transparently weak semantics.
‘Mansplaining’ the Budget
Very predictably, Ms Badenoch came in for stiff criticism for an overly personal attack, particularly her jibe about Ms Reeves complaining about misogyny. “Let me explain to the Chancellor, woman to woman: people out there aren’t complaining because she’s female, they’re complaining because she’s utterly incompetent,” she rasped. And when she spotted Sir Keir whispering to her, “Is he mansplaining to you, by the way? Do you want help?”
A man wouldn’t have got away with that, or accusing her of “wallowing in self-pity”, that’s for sure, but a man would have been accused of misogyny no matter what was said, and the more effective the criticism the louder the attacks would become.
I saw it in action at most meetings I attended as an Edinburgh councillor, when female committee conveners regularly complained about misogyny when bad policies were attacked, even though there was never any mention of gender or anything which could even be construed as such. And the most irritated by the retreat to such unfalsifiable assertions were my female colleagues.
Not that Ms Badenoch or Conservative supporters will care, but what does matter is that it’s the launchpad for her to fully assert herself as a political leader to whom voters pay attention and recognise as a potential Prime Minister, for better or worse, rather than waiting to see what Nigel Farage has to say.
A brief flash of entertainment?
Will it be the start of a fightback or just a brief flash of entertainment in a short-lived leadership brought to a bitter conclusion when the polls don’t shift?
The speech at last month’s Manchester conference went down well, with the raw Tory meat of the proposed Stamp Duty abolition, and her performances at Prime Minister’s Questions have been improving rapidly, vital as it’s the only regular opportunity she has to make an impression on voters, and made easier by the wooden and lawyerly approach of her opponent.
Now the unions and Labour left-wingers are effectively running the Treasury, the odds favour a U-turn on the U-turn over changes to the Employment Bill and the resulting embarrassment will be a golden opportunity for Ms Badenoch to go in for the kill.
But even that’s not enough. She may be the leader of His Majesty’s loyal opposition, but it’s not Sir Keir she has to catch but Mr Farage, and there are no opportunities for them to go toe-to-toe. Even if there were, there’s no guarantee she’d come out on top in contest with a street fighter untroubled by anything as inconvenient as a past record in government.
The long road to overnight success
The Reform leader has been doing this a long time, and his forthcoming rally in Falkirk will be a far cry from 2013 when he sought shelter from a small but rowdy protest in a Royal Mile pub.
It took Ruth Davidson over two years to become an overnight sensation, but MS Badenoch has a bigger regular platform than Ms Davidson ever had, apart from the Brexit referendum TV debates, and she needs to take advantage. Fortunately, she has Team Davidson’s key strategist, Lord Mark McInnes, on hand as UK party chief executive. However, those who backed Robert Jenrick in the leadership contest regularly remind her supporters of her reputation for laziness, and there is a subtext of Bullseye-style “look at what you could have won” in his energetic social media videos.
Wednesday’s Budget debate demonstrated star quality which can be sold on the doorsteps, and presentation skills which might make people want to hear more, if she can get out and about to create opportunities for voters to associate with her, and in turn create her own moments for social media consumption. But she needs to capitalise on the moment, and to do so with the same enthusiasm she showed this week.
She might be hard to persuade, but she simply has no option but to be seen, to be engaging and to transform herself into someone the public wants to meet, whether they are Conservatives or not.
Boris Johnson may have proved eminently unsuitable to be Prime Minister, but when he was on the way up, boy was he box office. If Ms Badenoch can generate just a fraction of that, the fightback will be on. And who knows, it might even be cheerio for Nigel as well as Sir Keir.
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.