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Badenoch two-footed tackles her own party on football governance

Your weekly dose of gossip from around Westminster.

By Kevin Maguire

Nervous whispers against Kemi Badenoch could erupt into furious jeers because of her U-turn to oppose a Football Governance Bill initially proposed by the Tory government she was a minister in. Now the bill is being reintroduced by Labour, Con MPs worry the popular Stuart Andrew could walk – the shadow culture secretary having hailed this legislation as the most radical overhaul of the game’s governance since the Football Association’s 1863 formation. He, of course, was sports minister when the bill was first unveiled. Andrew quitting would be an own goal for a Kemikaze managing a thin parliamentary squad.

The tale of two Labour sackings is generating ill-feeling among MPs from the upper end of England with pointed accusations of a north-south divide under a Prime Minister from the Home Counties in a London seat. A very senior and prominent figure in the House of Commons was overheard growling in his northern accent that it was unjust that Keir Starmer instantly demanded Sheffield Heeley MP Lou Haigh’s resignation as transport minister yet clung to his Camden neighbour, Hampstead and Highgate’s Tulip Siddiq, before her inevitable resignation as a Treasury secretary over her family’s links to corruption allegations. Two months and 160 miles between the pair is brewing resentment among Labour’s northern cohort moaning into warm flat beer.

Starmer isn’t begging alone to pay homage to the mad court of King Trump. Badenoch instructed her office to plead for a White House invitation and ensure she’s on the VIP list when deranged Don visits Britain, to avoid being elbowed aside by rival and Trump superfan Nigel Farage. And dumping Rishi Sunak’s cigs and vapes, net-zero and footie positions will not extend to his courtship of tech bro Elon Musk. Badenough would love to rekindle a right-wing romance despite Musk’s antics at the presidential inauguration.

Mentally wrestling with chaos in rules-based Starmer’s regime, a baffled veteran peer groaned it was like trying to imagine the upright lawyer sneaking on to a bus without a ticket. “The way things are going,” wailed the Labour grandee, “with Keir’s luck, the double-decker would hit a low bridge.”

Peter Mandelson’s Washington posting hasn’t been warmly embraced by all red-rose modernisers. One comrade from the New Labour era forecast that a self-obsessed ambassador could quickly lose the Maga crowd. “When Peter Mandelson’s Mastermind specialist subject would be Peter Mandelson, he’ll bore them to death,” decries the ex-compadre. With friends like that, who needs Trumpist enemies?

[See also: Causing a stink: reflections on my viral PhD]


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This article appears in the 22 Jan 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Messiah Complex