This morning, I switched from BBC Radio 4 to BBC Radio 5 Live to hear Kemi Badenoch’s pitch to a broader audience ahead of the local elections. In an interview with Rick Edwards, the Tory leader punched right as she increasingly seeks to cast the Conservatives as the “sensible” right-wingers in British politics.
She also made use of the extraordinary George Robertson intervention today, in which the former Nato secretary general condemned government complacency on defence, as a means of attacking Nigel Farage as unserious. She claimed that Robertson had originally approached Reform with his critique of defence policy but was ignored.
She then went studs up on Viktor Orbán, the defeated right-wing prime minister of Hungary, attacking him as a “populist” who “left Hungary poorer than when he came in”. Badenoch also took the opportunity to lambast Trump’s Christ-posturing in recent days, calling it “preposterous” and “very bizarre”.
After years of consistent support for Trump, she set out her new position on the president: “If he’s saying something that makes sense, you know, we should agree. If he says something that doesn’t make sense, we should disagree.” She admitted the mess in the Strait of Hormuz was “caused by him not having a full plan” and said: “He’s wrong to make childish remarks. He’s wrong to use empty threats on Greenland and so on – all of that’s wrong. What he said about Iran, that’s wrong as well.”
Rather like the man who defeated Orbán, Péter Magyar, Badenoch remains an extraordinarily right-wing leader by the standards of the Conservative Party, but one who thinks her willingness to punch right might attract median voters.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[Further reading: Your Party goes extinct in Scotland]
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