Kemi Badenoch’s absolute favourite song, the one she cannot live without, the one she would take to a desert island above all the others she had to select for Radio Four, is “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough” by Michael Jackson, “the pop icon of the eighties, especially if you were black”. The song sums up her professional life, which is reflected too in her literary hero, Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair. Sharp and her ambitions resonated with Badenoch on a deep level but, she admits, “I wish she had quit while she was ahead!” Her luxury item would be all 22 Marvel movies. Her favourite superhero is Dr Strange (superpower: time travel) “because he would go back and do it again, and you never get to do that…”
Badenoch talks smilingly, in a way that makes me nervous. I always feel like she’s covering something – a problem, a doubt or an embarrassment – and perpetually on the cusp of stumbling over her words. When politicians appear on Desert Island Discs, I tend to assume they’ve had their tunes chosen by a cooler friend – this is usually in evidence when they don’t have much to say about the music. When imagining what Kemi’s selection might be, I also wondered whether there would be crossover with what an athlete would choose – motivating music, such as “Eye of The Tiger”, or “Final Countdown”. Athletes, like politicians, have bigger things to focus on than culture: namely, the Self and the prize. (Actually, Kemi does talk about culture, repeating her mantra that Britain should not be a multicultural country. Culture is about more than what we eat or what we wear, she points out. Then she adds, “Queuing is culture. There are people who don’t want to queue. I think we should queue.”)
In some ways, Kemi is very literal – her choices include songs played at her wedding (“Love is All Around”); songs she listens to with her children in the car (“Carry You Home” by Alex Warren); two numbers from Hamilton that speak of political potential; and a hymn, sung by an adult Aled Jones, that reminds her of her mother, because when her mother first heard it, at Kemi’s wedding, she said, “What is this? I love it!”
She likes to make her own definitions, and interpret things her way, and it is in those interpretations that you get the clearest sense of her self belief. Baz Luhrmann’s “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” is “sympathetic to politicians”, she thinks, because of the line, “Accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise, politicians will philander.” Perhaps this is a sign of what she calls her “cynical optimism”. Her most original oxymoron appears when she talks about the time she hacked into Harriet Harman’s website, a few years before she became an MP. It was an “accidental prank”, she says.
A few years ago, I felt genuine grief at the direction of Desert Island Discs since Lauren Laverne took it over – her lack of deep inquiry, her inability to push at a difficult moment, the loss of all the techniques that had Kirsty and Sue’s guests in tears. But I have adjusted to the loss, as we adjust to all losses, and I appreciate any gentle probe from Laverne, who was not talking smilingly to Badenoch, but coolly. So what would Kemi change, Laverne asked, if she was Dr Strange, and could go back in time? Nothing about her own life, Badenoch replied. She would tell other people to do things differently.
There were glimpses of such an interesting life here. Badenoch attended a “borstal-style” boarding school in Nigeria where every girl had a machete and a hoe with which to help cut the grass. She stopped eating there, started failing. Then she was shipped off to the UK alone, at 16. You wanted to get right under the bonnet, to the emotional reality of Badenoch. But if we never do, it won’t be the fault of the person asking the questions.
[Further reading: The cruelty of Kemi Badenoch’s “Benefits Street” politics]
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