Kemi Badenoch stood in the room at Church House where, in 1941, speaking to a relocated Commons, Churchill announced the sinking of the Bismarck. Mrs Badenoch proceeded to unleash some torpedoes of her own at targets on the Right and Left.
Defectors to Reform were ‘drama queens’ who had thrown ‘tantrums’. She added: ‘When my kids have a tantrum, I don’t give up or change my mind. I send them to their room.’ She accompanied this with a brisk pointing gesture, the sort you might use when instructing a spaniel to go outside.
She was equally unimpressed by relics of the David Cameron and Theresa May era who earlier this week rattled their ghostly chains. They were, she suggested, has-beens. The Shadow Chancellor would be prepared to listen to any thoughts they might have on economic growth, but on other policies – she clearly meant Europe, Net Zero and immigration – they could hop it. Mrs B was interested in ‘the future, not the past’.
With Sir Keir Starmer having jetted to Beijing, the Tory leader did not need to spend her Wednesday morning preparing for PMQs. She used it instead to deliver this speech at Church House’s Hoare memorial hall. A plaque on the wall noted that the Commons met in the room several times during the Blitz years. Was Kemi trying to signal that she considers recent weeks to have been her own darkest hour?
Just after 10am she came purring to the lectern, threw a droll eyebrow at the audience and asked, ‘Shall we talk about what’s been going on over the past few weeks?’ She has developed a conversational tone when making political speeches. The voice is throaty, smoky, unstressed, sardonic. It’s as if she is constantly about to say ‘Yeah, right!’
She does not bounce up and down on her toes or project like Nigel Farage. Her tone is more that of an emergency rescue officer quietly telling stricken victims how she intends to extract them from a crumpled minibus. If they will keep calm and follow her instructions they may stand a chance of getting out without toppling over the edge of the cliff.
The world was in peril but Labour ministers were ‘scheming’ to dump Sir Keir. Reform was merely interested in getting on telly and had ‘dressed up a defection rally as a veterans’ event’. The public was, she said, ‘fed up with this style of politics’.
An upstairs gallery had been opened to accommodate a surprisingly large throng of MPs, activists and reporters. There were quite a few smooth-cheeked youths in dark suits. I half-expected them to try to sell me a copy of the Jehovah’s Witness magazine, The Watchtower.
Cameron’s Tories were more chic and posh. In the Boris years they became red-trousered and veiny-nosed. Mrs Badenoch’s party faithful are serious, sober, unsexy. Fashion and anger are really not their thing. With so many recent defections and Reform’s continued polling lead, you might expect them to be gloomy. This lot didn’t seem that. They were upbeat and ready to stick with Mrs Badenoch. A journalist asked ‘Should you be doing more to win your defectors back?’, which was answered by cries of ‘No! No!’ from the audience.
Mrs Badenoch complained that every time she made headway against the Starmer Government, Reform kicked the Tories in the kidneys.
But she insisted: ‘I’m not going to be blown off course’. When politicians say that sort of thing they usually whack the lectern or push out their muzzles. Mrs Badenoch is too jazz-bar for that. She’s so laid-back, so sure she’s on the right path, you feel she must be eating a jumbo pile of marijuana cookies for breakfast every day. She’s certainly different from No 10’s constipated potato, Reform’s frenetic whipper-uppers and the Lib Dems’ Norman Wisdom. If she can make it to the general election she may prove a handy campaigner.
As for PMQs, you didn’t miss much. David Lammy faced shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith. Two bald duds.
