Kemi Badenoch is currently locked in what could be a definitive fight for her political future with the former chairman of the Post Office, who she sacked peremptorily last week. This being the Tory Party, confusion has inevitably followed as she changes the story from one about the Horizon compensation scheme to a so-far unsubstantiated allegation of bullying. If the latter there is a difficult issue of (lack of) due process to be overcome and if its the former it’s also not looking good as the chairman in question, Henry Staunton, has produced notes which he says are contemporaneous and which put him on the side of the sub-postmasters rather than Badenoch and her department. In that fight, it is interesting to note who the sub-postmasters seem to trust, and it ain’t Badenoch.
This raises the question of whether Badenoch being in pole position to be the next Tory leader is going to work out and, if she succeeds in winning that race, whether she is likely to be any good. In some ways, it is easy to see why she has emerged as a serious contender – not as unpopular as the Popular Conservatives, not as determined to return to the 1950s as the New Conservatives and not as plain crazy as the Common Sense Conservatives. She is a true believer in Brexit and is very socially conservative, but has otherwise managed to straddle the liberal and libertarian wings of the party with some astuteness.
Badenoch comes from a talented family – her mother is a professor of physiology – and she seems reasonably intelligent, with a good but not outstanding academic performance – middle-of-the-road Sussex University and then a law degree at Birkbeck. Her career before politics is also a bit underwhelming – a software engineer for a few years at Logica before working in the least skilled area of finance, private wealth management, and then somehow ending up as Digital Director of the Spectator. All are undoubtedly solid but hardly the stuff dreams are made of.
Then came politics, with runs at the London Assembly before winning selection for the ultra-safe Tory seat of Saffron Walden. She then seems to rise almost imperceptibly with the support of Michael Gove, whose clan of ex-journalist cronies she has joined, but it is her performance as she has risen that raises the most questions. Leaving aside that her social beliefs – anti-woke, some degree of resistance to LGBT rights, strong Christian beliefs, support of the positives from colonialism – are catnip to Tory members, is she actually any good?
As a now longstanding Secretary of State for Trade, first appointed by The Great She-Lettuce, aka Liz Truss, and then re-appointed by Rishi Sunak, the most obvious point is what has she actually achieved in all those years?
The trade deal with the U.S. – the great hope of the Brexiteers – is completely dead in the water, partially replaced by embarrassing “trade deals” with individual U.S. states which means, of course, that they are not actually trade deals at all given that only the Federal government has the power to do such deals. They are best seen as the equivalent of twinning arrangements between towns. Great for a free junket for officials to visit the States, bugger all use to anyone else.
Then there is the trade deal with India. Also dead in the water despite this being potentially one of the most significant deals that any government could hope to achieve. Now one can safely assume that Modi and his crew are not easy to deal with but the whole point about having sufficient talent to become leader of a party and potentially prime minister (albeit I think the idea of any new leader of the Tory party becoming PM within a decade is for the birds) is that you are capable of cutting the gordion knot and getting these things done. And it seems she is not.
A conclusion which is underlined by the kerfuffle over negotiations with Canada where she seems desperate to show she has got a significant trade deal she can get over the line and so has bigged up the continuing negotiations to the bafflement of the actual Canadians who are clear that the whole thing is dead.
This leaves us with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, with the obvious flaw that we are nowhere near the Pacific let alone being across it, and Australia which, while it does produce unbelievably and annoyingly great sports stars and soap actors, is in fact quite small, a long way away and economically irrelevant other than to our farmers who get screwed under the deal.
Now look at the above and tell me if that is the CV of someone destined to become Prime Minister. Because I don’t think it is, and that the Tory membership seems to believe so is a sign of how far down the barrel they have gone.
As a final coda, there is also one theme that cuts through her activities – a predilection for tweeting before thinking. It got her into trouble over HuffPost journalist Nadine White where she made some serious personal attacks which do not look good on a re-read, it has happened with her obviously unthought-through tweets about Henry Staunton and yet again with this war or words with Canada. The inability to think before tweeting is not a good sign at all, albeit the potential fun we could all have watching her dig endless holes as Tory leader might make it quite fun to watch….
Related post: Ex-Post Office chief accused of lying says he has the memo (thelondoneconomic.com)
