Two years ago, I wrote an essay here called ‘In praise of Kemi Badenoch’. To say it was admiring is like saying that Abelard quite fancied Heloise. She sent me a nice message on X; I went mildly berserk one evening when drunk and sent her a poem I’d had ChatGPT write, basically saying that she was going to save the world. Our communication understandably dwindled after that, as she probably came to believe I was a crazy person.
To be fair, I also became increasingly taken with Reform; the re-nationalisation plan in particular grabbed me. I wrote about my turncoat ways in the i Paper: ‘When I and millions of other former Labour voters choose Reform at the next general election, it’s not because we’re rabid right-wingers. It’s because we’re done with being lectured by clowns. Keir Starmer gives the impression that he only comes alive in the rarified air of Davos. Ed Davey shows a similar lack of connection, with his numerous conversations about how many women have penises. Kemi Badenoch is likeable but the party she leads spent nearly a decade and a half permitting every source of power from the police to the civil service to be captured and poisoned by anti-democratic, free speech-fearing weirdos,’ I finished treacherously of my erstwhile pin-up. But after hearing Mrs B on Desert Island Discs last week, I’m feeling very inclined to switch sides again.
It’s true that Mrs B served in the Johnson, Sunak and Truss governments, so can’t be strictly said to have clean hands. But her work as minister for women and equalities stands out among the mostly useless and/or destructive cabinets of the three. Besides, if she hadn’t taken her chances and served in office, there would have been no chance of her going on to stand, let alone win, the leadership contest, so needs must. The fact remains that in a political landscape mired in men of a certain sort – the kind that would make you physically leave a party to avoid talking to them for one moment longer – and their ghastly female imitators, Badenoch stands out as somewhat fascinating.
You could make a film about her life (imagine The Keir Starmer Story!). Born in London; raised in a ‘middle-class’ home in Nigeria which nevertheless ‘still meant having no running water or electricity, sometimes taking your own chair to school’, so badly had the ruling junta screwed up the economy. Returning to England alone at 16 to complete her education, flipping burgers and doing other manual jobs the Labour lot wouldn’t go near. Realising at Sussex University what a bunch of ocean-going halfwits the modern left are, and joining the Conservative party for laughs. Working her way up and finally being elected for her Essex seat at 37, campaigning while pushing her third child in a pushchair. ‘Essex is very much my personality – I call myself an Essex girl,’ she has said.
She is British to the bone, with a sweeping sense of history; in her maiden speech in 2017, she described the vote for Brexit as ‘the greatest ever vote of confidence in the project of the United Kingdom’ and named her heroes as Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and Airey Neave – the first two predictable, but the third an affecting and knowledgeable addition. She is appealingly human, not an apparent product of the Uncanny Valley like Sir Keir. Even her ‘mistakes’ make her more likeable, such as saying that 10 per cent of civil servants are so bad they should be in prison, or in her twenties hacking into Harriet ‘holier-than-thou’ Harman’s website and making it pro-Conservative. When the journalist Nadine White presumptuously demanded to know why Badenoch had not joined in with a pro-vaccine propaganda film aimed at the black community, Badenoch answered her smartly and then proceeded to put their correspondence online, causing White to have a fainting fit and the NUJ to get on their high (Trojan) horse. ‘Kemi Badenoch felt that the correspondence with Nadine White was something she should put in the public domain,’ her press secretary said reasonably.
It shows how much I like her that two of the songs she picked would rate on my list of the ten worst pop records of all time
Because she does like to get things out in the open, despite what was seen as her cageiness from the start of winning the leadership contest to comparatively recently. But I’d bet that this was just reluctance to make rash promises about everything from not raising taxes to making breasts swell just by giving them a good talking to – all inevitably U-turned on. Hers has been a slow build, as a girl who once asked if you wanted fries with your burger feels her way into a massive role – leading the most successful party in history back from the wilderness.
Her performance at PMQs alone has brought the weekly bun-fight back to life. Similarly, her performance on DID was a beautiful thing to behold. We’re used to politicians checking with aides what biscuit it’s OK to like; imagine how any of this cabinet (with the exception of Wes Streeting) would have their spads exhaustively checking what songs it was all right to choose. But you can picture Kemi chucking them together the weekend before: a couple from Hamilton, a Sam Cooke which reminded her of her parents, a hymn from her wedding to reflect her cultural Christianity and her admiration for her mother and her very favourite one of all, ‘Don’t Stop Til’ You Get Enough’ by Michael Jackson – a creep, it transpired, but splendid in the summertime of his inspiration. And certainly not a ‘safe’ choice.
It shows how much I like her that two of the songs she picked would rate on my list of the ten worst pop records of all time. One was the awful Baz Luhrman lecture about wearing sunscreen. But even worse, her wedding song was Wet Wet Wet’s ‘Love Is All Around’, a repulsive cover of the great Troggs song which even the band came to loathe so much that they instructed ‘voluntary deletion’ from their record label ‘to save both ours and the nation’s sanity’. Nevertheless, when she summed up her feelings for Mr Badenoch, speaking the words ‘You know I love you, I always will’, it struck me again that the couple appear to have one of the extremely few attractive and genuine marriages in British politics. Their discreet peck when she won the leadership was a world away from the elaborate charades of marital adoration so many other bad actors play out.
Even limply left-wing Lauren Laverne seemed charmed. I was frankly re-enchanted. It helps that the Reform party, even in the short time since my turncoat act in the i Paper, isn’t looking like something new any more, but a home for teed-off Tories who failed to bag the job they wanted. Badenoch is something different, just as Reform once seemed. I’m still attracted by the way Nigel Farage’s gang make politicians of other parties clutch their pearls, but I’m now far more inclined to take one more chance on the Tories, purely because of Mrs B.
As a footnote, my husband – who has good-humouredly tolerated my fan-worship of Kemi – was shocked that her luxury item would be the first 22 Marvel films; as a Marvel buff he informs me that this shows she has excellent judgment, because apparently the 23rd was when they started ‘going off’. But it may also have been a sly reference to her own political strategy – many observers believed Marvel Studios were just making stuff up as they went along in the early days, doing whatever they felt would most appeal to the public, but by the time they got to that 22nd film (Avengers: Endgame), no one could be in any doubt that there had been a plan all along – and a brilliant one at that.
Just like Kemi? We can but hope.
@thespectatormagazine Kemi Badenoch chose her Desert Island Discs, unlike many other politicians Michael and Maddie discuss Kemi Badenoch's choice of Desert Island Discs that include Michael Jackson's Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough, Love Is All Around by Wet Wet Wet, two songs from the musical Hamilton, and the hymn – Be Still, for the Presence of the Lord. #kemibadenoch #desertislanddiscs #quiteright
♬ original sound – The Spectator
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