Fans of Frank Sinatra used to have a favourite saying when their hero was in his pomp: ‘It’s Frank’s world. We just live in it.’ After a day and a half of the Tory conference in Birmingham, there is a temptation to refashion the observation around Kemi Badenoch, so completely has she dominated proceedings. And not, it must immediately be said, always in an obviously advantageous way for her leadership campaign.
Supporters of Badenoch were left deeply irritated
Badenoch seemed unabashed at the welter of stories surrounding her when she told an event for leadership candidates held by the influential ConservativeHome website at which she spoke last: ‘I think we all know I am the one everyone has been waiting for.’
After causing outrage in left-wing circles by observing that some cultures are inferior and don’t easily fit into British society, Badenoch yesterday appeared to stumble into a much trickier row about maternity pay. She seemed to say she thought it was excessive but later insisted she had been speaking about the general level of regulation on business.
It was notable, however, how ruthlessly the rival leadership candidates piled into her. Tom Tugendhat said he wanted to see ‘strong maternity and paternity pay’. The frontrunner Robert Jenrick said: ‘I don’t agree with Kemi on this one. I’m a father of three young daughters, I want to see them get the support they need when they enter the workplace.’
Jenrick had also earlier taken issue with Badenoch over her stance on immigration and integration, saying that he disagreed with the extent of her emphasis on the cultural background of migrants ‘because numbers are important too’. One Jenrick ally was reported to have said she had gone ‘Kemi-kaze’ on the first day of conference.
Supporters of Badenoch were left deeply irritated, complaining that Jenrick had deliberately misinterpreted her remarks about both issues. Despite a ludicrous ‘yellow card’ system intended to stop the camps sniping at each other, the inevitable ‘blue on blue’ briefings are now in full swing. One Badenoch supporter recently told me: ‘Robert was a generic centrist and now he’s a generic right-winger’.
The spats certainly appear to underline Badenoch’s claim that she is the candidate who can ‘cut through’ in the media, but also to give succour to those who say her directness sometimes lacks a quality control button, leading to her picking unnecessary fights as well as advantageous ones.
As the candidate who still polls best with the Tory grassroots – though her lead over Jenrick in that regard is narrowing according to the latest ConsevativeHome survey – she must know that a strategic goal of all the other camps will be to come out of the conference having punctured the idea that MPs are under any kind of special duty to allow her name to go before the membership.
For Jenrick the motivation is obvious: he wants an easier opponent in the final two. James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat, meanwhile, want to be that other name and each no doubt believes he has the wherewithal to cause an upset. Given they are both from the left of the party, there is every chance of the supporters of whichever of them is eliminated in the next round switching predominantly to the survivor.
So the microscope will continue to be on Badenoch’s every utterance. Dominating the headlines is positive for her, but her team also needs to understand that not all publicity is good publicity. Jenrick has made up so much ground in the past nine months or so that it will not be good enough for her to imbibe the spirit of Eric Morecambe and think that playing the right notes but not necessarily in the right order will be sufficient.
If Tory MPs are to be persuaded that to stitch her up at the stage when they reduce the field from three to two would cause perilous amounts of fury among the grassroots, then she must be on point all day, every day until the conference closes on Wednesday.
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