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Kemi Badenoch has emphasised the importance of internal discussions not being leaked in the first meeting of the shadow cabinet since Rishi Sunak’s demise.
Leaked cabinet discussions suggest the former levelling-up secretary, who managed to fend off Labour’s Issy Waite in the July General Election to hold her North West Essex seat, was dismayed by the Conservative Party’s landslide defeat.
She aired concerns that some of her colleagues are failing to grasp the “enormity” of the loss, which saw the Tories slump to just 121 seats in the House of Commons, down 244 from their 2019 total.
Badenoch said Sunak’s decision to call an early election without informing his cabinet was a mistake and bordered on “unconstitutional”, while describing Craig Williams, Sunak’s parliamentary private secretary, as a “buffoon”.
In other outbursts, the shadow housing secretary said that Sunak’s decision to return early from D-Day commemorations was “disastrous” and had dominated the election campaign, adding that colleagues such as Penny Mordaunt would still be MPs today if he had stayed longer in France.
She said the Tories should not gloss over the scale of the election defeat, and that many colleagues were clearly still traumatised.
She added that Suella Braverman, the former home secretary who has made a series of trenchant interventions, appeared to be having a “very public” nervous breakdown.
Braverman is seen as one of the frontrunners to replace Sunak, alongside Badenoch.
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