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3 hours ago
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Abandon hope all ye who enter here. You’d have thought this would be the very definition of futility. An act of defiant nihilism. A few weeks ago Kemi Badenoch had declared that the Tory candidate for Gorton and Denton, Charlotte Cadden, had been the real winner despite getting under 2% of the vote and losing her deposit. Now Kemi was to launch the Conservatives’ local election campaign in the certain knowledge the end result would be electoral wipeout. Tory councillors falling on their swords en masse.
And yet … This was politics as looking-glass war. Where all the old certainties were gone. Where you couldn’t be sure that anything was real. Because inside the cafe at St John’s Smith Square in Westminster, the excitement was tangible. Most of the shadow cabinet were lined up in the front row behind the podium, their smiles more or less genuine. And behind them about a hundred Tory activists, chanting and waving banners and union jacks. You could even spot John Redwood lurking in the background. The night of the living dead.
It was all just a bit weird. It was as though we were back in the heyday of Margaret Thatcher. Or in that fleeting half-life when Borismania was a thing. As if the Tories were unchallenged in the polls. Twenty points ahead of their nearest rivals. Rather than flatlining on 17%. Or perhaps we were witnessing a re-enactment of the Jonestown massacre. A moment of intense rapture to be followed by an hour-long political suicide note. Either way, it proved to be a collector’s item.
James Cleverly was brought out of semi-retirement as the warm-up act. A job he threw himself into wholeheartedly. Jimmy Dimly has always fancied a career as a fluffer. “Who loves their country?” he said. Everyone yelled back. Apparently you have to be a Tory to really love the UK. Everyone else is just going through the motions. Their patriotism can’t be trusted.
“You’re here to see Kemi,” he continued. “Our next prime minister.” Mmm. I don’t think so. She’s unlikely to be around to lead the Conservatives into the next election. “Her plans are supported by people everywhere.” By everywhere, he meant everywhere in the room. “She has had a transformational effect on our party.” As in, she’s been leader while the Tories have fallen from the high 20s in the opinion polls to the mid-teens. Where they have been for the last nine months. I guess that’s a transformation of sorts.
But Jimmy D wasn’t to be denied. Let’s see some of Kemi’s highlights, he shouted. By now the audience was deliriously close to orgasm. Yes please! The video screen went totally blank. Whoever was meant to be in charge of the tech had clearly lost Kemi’s showreel. Or had been unable to find any magic moments. Have another go, Jimmy pleaded. They did. But still nothing. On days like this, the jokes write themselves. Eventually Dimly decided to cut his losses and chose to welcome Kemi to the podium.
A heavy chant of “Kemi, Kemi” pulsated through the room as the Conservative leader made her way to the microphone. “Wow,” she said. “Give it up for James Cleverly.” No one has ever said that before. We are a party renewed. We are the only party with a plan for Britain. We will make things better. I’m not sure that’s how the rest of the country see it. She was going to drill in the North Sea to make sure our energy supply was not interrupted by the war she had supported. Logic is not her strongest point. It also seemed as though you could get the pipelines open in a matter of hours.
Bad people would be punished. There would be 10,000 extra police officers on every street corner. I can see this might be quite the deterrent but I am not sure Kemi has got her maths right. “There will be no drugs in public spaces,” she insisted. Apart from in this room. Because everyone, including Kemi, appeared to be completely out of their heads. No idea what Kool-Aid they had been taking, but it was definitely a Class A.
This wasn’t just a mean-spirited version of Britain, it was also positively deranged. She went on to say that Labour were useless because they hadn’t given enough thought to how they were going to fix the mess the Tories had left after 14 years in office. Kemi seemed to be unaware that many of the culprits – herself included – were up on the stage. It could have been a police identification parade. Take Mel Stride. Kemi talked about lowering the welfare bill by £47bn. Which is more or less what the Melster had increased it by when he had been work and pensions secretary.
Nor did things become much clearer during the media Q&A. If anything, Kemi’s hallucinations were spiralling out of control. She was rushing on her run. She guessed, but she just didn’t know. She wasn’t talking damage control or expectation management about the forthcoming losses in the May elections. She was out to win every seat going. This could have been her Downfall bunker moment.
Only this was just the start. She had never changed her position on the war with Iran. The only person to have done that was Keir Starmer. The cheek was breathtaking. As was her amnesia. As though she has literally no recollection of anything she said three weeks ago and has the revisionist right to re-edit her life to one that suits her better. She is the sole arbiter of her own reality. Then there was her shadow cabinet. Where the rest of the world saw a bunch of deadbeats who had previously failed in government, Kemi saw a team of ingenus with no previous to be taken into account.
The final question from the Guardian was on her support for comments by Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, on how Muslims gathering in Trafalgar Square to pray was offensive to British values. Kemi gave us a word salad. All religions including Islam had the right to pray in public, apart from Islam. It wasn’t the praying she objected to. It was the segregation of women. A feature of other religions as well, and something Timothy had never mentioned. Almost as though she hadn’t thought this one through.
It had been an exhausting hour. A time of fantasy. One in which it had been easiest to locate the truth by latching on to the opposite of everything Kemi had said. On leaving the building, everyone gave their head a gentle wobble. Just to make sure the world was still the right way up.
