Kemi Badenoch is relaunching. The Conservative leader has made a number of brand-aware media interventions recently.
First, she said she intended to be Britain’s Javier Milei, the chainsaw-wielding (literally) “anarcho-capitalist” Argentinian president whose political mission is to slash public spending. This was followed by the revelation that she no longer identifies as Nigerian. (As a reminder, Badenoch was born in the UK to Nigerian parents and spent most of her childhood in Lagos, before coming to London to study for her A-levels.) Then she went to war with Liz Truss (as discussed earlier this week), finally putting a bit of distance between herself and the least popular Conservative prime minister.
Now, the notoriously media-adverse Tory leader has done a wide-ranging interview with the BBC’s Amol Rajan, in which she discusses how she once got another pupil expelled for cheating while at school around aged 15 and lost her Christian faith after reading how the Austrian Josef Fritzl man raped his captive daughter for 24 years.
These anecdotes are, to be honest, a bit odd. On the cheating one, Badenoch said that when people (it’s unclear whether she means her classmates or her teachers) asked why she had got the other boy into trouble, “I said ‘because he was doing the wrong thing’.” She clearly thinks this makes her sound moral and just, as somebody who cannot abide rule-breakers. That Badenoch also said she “didn’t get praised for it” implies she expected praise; again, suggesting she believes the anecdote puts her in a positive light. Whether most Brits, thinking back to their teenage selves, will be able to imagine doing as she did or consider it worthy of praise is more dubious.
As for her faith, Badenoch’s position that she is a “cultural Christian”, even if she no longer believes in God, is hardly unusual for a Conservative leader. Liz Truss said similar when she was appointed PM. David Cameron, meanwhile, borrowed Boris Johnson’s line that his “religious faith is a bit like the reception for Magic FM in the Chilterns: it sort of comes and goes”. Nor is the reasoning she gives for atheism all that startling. Lots of people find their belief in a higher power waning when confronted with tragedies, whether natural disasters, personal grief or horrific news stories.
But just read Badenoch’s description of her thought process: “I was praying for all sorts of stupid things and I was getting my prayers answered. I was praying to have good grades, my hair should grow longer, and I would pray for the bus to come on time so I wouldn’t miss something… Why were those prayers answered, and not [Elisabeth Fritzl’s] prayers?” Leaving aside the simplistic theology, the Fritzl case hit the news in 2008, when Badenoch was 28. Praying for longer hair or for a bus to come on time does not exactly chime with the average adult experience (most of whom no longer have to worry about getting good grades, either).
This isn’t the first time Badenoch has given details of her life or thinking that make her seem eccentric. Her insistence that she never makes gaffes springs to mind, as does her tirade against sandwiches (in particular, moist bread). She still clings to the origin story of the “poverty of low expectations” she encountered at school in London, when teachers discouraged her from applying to Oxbridge or medical school. Her lacklustre A-level results (B, B, D) suggest there may be more to this discouragement than unthinking racial prejudice. So do the comments from her former head teacher – whom Rajan quotes in the BBC interview when she retold that story – which refute her assessment. But that doesn’t fit into the Badenoch world-view.
Seeming normal is both a crucial skill in politics and one that many politicians struggle with. Those who reach the upper echelons of politics are rarely “normal” in any real sense – the key is how well they are able to hide their various oddities. Once the public (or the media) decides you are a bit weird (Ed Miliband eating a bacon sandwich), it’s hard to recover. Unless you lean in and make weirdness your brand (Boris Johnson painting cardboard boxes to look like buses). Voters are on the lookout for “gotcha” moments when they detect a whiff of inauthenticity (David Cameron forgetting who his favourite football team was), while the reality of being a front-line politician can make even genuine sentiment appear manufactured (Keir Starmer’s love of Arsenal).
The challenge Badenoch has is that she has not yet properly introduced herself to the British public. While she might be a Big Name In Westminster, according to YouGov one sixth of voters don’t actually know who she is – putting her below Nick Clegg, Diane Abbott and Suella Braverman. It takes time to introduce an opposition leader to the British public, but there does need to be a strategy. As one former Tory adviser told me in March: “When David Cameron was four months in… he was hugging huskies. All anyone knows about Kemi is she wants to cut maternity leave and hates bread.”
Now they know she hates bread and loves snitching. Badenoch is in catch-up mode. One way to address that is to make big, attention-grabbing statements: like no longer identifying as Nigerian, or starting some blue-on-blue infighting by provoking Truss. Another is to try to win people over by opening up about issues of faith and ethical stances (the cheating example). But the latter only works if those stories are relatable. And their relatability isn’t exactly helped by a simultaneous comparison with a far-right Argentinian with a chainsaw.
All of this should be seen in the context of the Tories languishing on 18 per cent in the polls, during a summer recess in which Reform’s crime campaign has sucked up all the political oxygen – and with just three months until Badenoch’s immunity runs out, when Conservative MPs can trigger a leadership challenge. The need for some kind of relaunch is clear. But it’s hard to see how her recent interventions are meant to help, and she risks affirming her reputation for weirdness before the public knows much else about her. After all, it’s not like Miliband chose to get the bacon sandwich expelled.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[See also: Keir Starmer would be a much happier politician in Japan]
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