Politics: on hold

By Richard North - December 29, 2024

Before even the Mail on Sunday launched its front-page bombshell today, there were rumours swirling around social media that the hapless Olukemi was about to tender her resignation as leader of the Conservative Party.

This followed her ill-considered and poorly-directed challenge to golden boy Farage over his party’s “membership” claims and, while Olukemi has her lukewarm defenders, she was effectively holed below the waterline, with her credibility shot to pieces.

Even if that minor spat is survivable, I suspect she may struggle with this assault, as the MoS plunges the dagger deep into her political heart, accusing her of seeking out the CEO of GB News to complain that he was giving “too much of a platform” to her critics, raising the “the spectre of regulation” if he didn’t tone down the coverage.

As the MoS points out, the golden boy has a prime-time show on what it calls this “Right-wing channel”, which is obviously thought to be the reasons why little Olukemi called the pre-Christmas meeting to instruct CEO Angelos Frangopoulos that GB News should not be “a haven for my critics”.

It has to be said at this juncture that, in what is usually the quietest political period of the year, Olukemi Badenough has displayed a rare genius in escalating a minor event orchestrated by the chancer Farage into a major personal crisis for herself, only to have her woes multiply as she gets caught out over a frankly insane intervention with GB News, presumably in the naïve belief that this would never be reported.

This is the same woman, incidentally, who told GB News in an interview two weeks ago: “I know how certain things might sound if they’re not said properly. So I never have gaffes or, you know, apologising for something that I said… I never have to clarify because I think very carefully about what I say…”.

Few, however, would argue that her decision to get involved in an online scrap with Farage is anything other than a “gaffe”, bringing the iPaper into the fray with news that her intervention had been “questioned by Conservatives” after it had dominated headlines during the festive period.

One Tory insider, we are told, said the party needed to be alive to the threat from Reform, particularly when it came to the forthcoming local elections, but added: “Membership doesn’t mean success”.

This unnamed “insider” went on to say that “Picking a fight seems pointless – never wrestle with a pig as they say. Farage and Co are total chancers so maybe it’s fake but not sure what Kemi is gaining by having yet another Twitter fight”.

I don’t know whether wrestling with a pig is any better or worse than fighting with a chimney sweep, but either activity is ill-advised if you are a high person in politics. Even if you win, you lose.

On avoiding losing her battles, little Olukemi is getting plenty of advice, not least from the Independent’s Chris Blackhurst, who writes under the heading: “To conquer Reform UK, Kemi Badenoch must get back to business – fast”.

In his sub-head, Blackhurst asserts that her “inaction” is only highlighting Farage’s drive and growing confidence. To regain lost ground, he says, “the Tories need to restore their reputation among business – and time is ticking”.

This, at first sight, seems to have been written before Olukemi’s current activity, although I doubt that this was the “action” he was thinking of being so necessary. He is, in fact, referring to her end-of-year interview on Radio 4, which he describes as having “an air of unreality”.

It felt, writes Blackhurst, “like listening to a new football manager who has taken over a team that is on the slide. They’re not going to rush, they’re taking their time, playing themselves in, working out strengths and weaknesses, which gaps need filling and the players they can afford to discard”.

The trouble is, he opines, all the while they’re getting beaten, the season is running out and the threat of relegation moves ever nearer. For Manchester United and its new coach, Ruben Amorim, think Tories and Badenough.

Of course, Blackhurst concedes, Badenough does not want to repeat the same mistakes of previous leaders; of course, she wants to get it right and not go hell for leather down a path that only serves to weaken the party even further.

She has, as well, the luxury of knowing that Labour has a thumping majority and there will not be a general election until 2029. Thus, Blackhurst poses the question that appears (or appeared) to be dominating Olukemi’s thinking. “Why not sit back and watch Sir Keir Starmer and his colleagues mess things up, let them do all the work for you?”

And there’s the rub. “That would be fine if there was only Labour to worry about”, says Blackhurst. “But there isn’t. There’s a new competitor, who, every day that passes, is gaining more and more ground”.

This is the big, bad wolf, Farage, and now we see that Blackhurst has clocked the “membership” debacle. He equates Badenough complaining that his numbers were cooked as “the equivalent of the football boss moaning about referees out to get their team – it does not affect the result, crucially it does not reverse the momentum”.

He then offers a better analogy, referring to Lord King of Wartnaby the late chair of British Airways, who refused to take Richard Branson seriously and worse, failed to accept that anyone else did. His was the “world’s favourite airline”; Virgin, headed by a bearded, ex-hippy who wore baggy jumpers instead of a pinstripe suit, had no chance.

But when Virgin grew in popularity and ate away at BA’s hegemony, King tried not to be seen to be concerned in public, while privately launching a “dirty tricks” campaign against the newcomer. When that unravelled spectacularly, King’s company was a laughing stock, no longer worthy of that “favourite” title.

I’m not sure this works entirely as a comparison, but the point is made. Olukemi is proving flat-footed in her response to the golden boy. She and her Tories clearly don’t know what to make of him.

It is here that Blackhurst has some advice to offer, remarking that it was only when BA returned to basics, improving its customer service and competing on price and reach, that some sort of order was restored.

As the party of business, he says, the Tories should understand this. Coincidentally, the current and mounting travails of that community present them with an immediate opportunity to hit back and to slow Reform’s apparently relentless and accelerating rise.

By not saying anything, though, he argues that Badenough is allowing a vacuum to be created. She must know as a matter of urgency that your opponents happily step into vacuums you leave. At present, she can come out and swing business, the Tory pillar down the ages, behind her.

Yet, for all that, Blackhurst suggests as the Tory offer, meaningful trade deals; closer ties with the EU, easier immigration not harder, for those with the skills employers need, reduced and simplified business taxes, less red tape and stifling regulation and genuine reform of business rates.

With friends like that, one might say, who needs enemies. Pushing for closer ties with the EU and “easier immigration” is as close to a death wish as the Tories could imagine – short of getting into a pointless spat with Farage and losing the plot.

And just how high the stakes have become is illustrated by a poll detailed by the Sunday Times. Organised by the More in Common group, this is the first major MRP (Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification) poll since the election.

It has Labour losing over 150 seats to end with 256, the Tories (even with Badenough) gaining 87, to bring them to 208, and Reform pulling in a total of 71 seats from the five they already have. The Lib-Dems get 66.

Given the performance of MRP polls during the general election campaign, these results need to be taken with a pinch of salt, but they do point to a plausible, if nightmare scenario where no single party gets enough votes to form a majority government.

In this poll, even the Tories and Reform combined do not have a majority of seats in the Commons, and a Labour-Lib-Dem coalition would also fall short of the necessary numbers. We would face the spectre of an unstable, minority Labour government and another general election is short order.

For the record, the poll also provides party support figures, with Labour on 29 percent, the Tories on 28 percent, Reform UK delivering 19 percent and the Lib Dems on 11 percent.

This is the scenario that the Tories have to address, and they are not going to do it with Badenough playing silly games with Farage. Most probably, they are not going to do it with Badenough at all, the Tories only chance being to ditch this inadequate woman in sufficient time before the election for an adult to build a credible party profile, leaving time for Reform to self-destruct (but that’s a story for another day).
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Whether it is even possible for the Tories to recover remains to be seen, but it is probably fair to say that real politics is on hold until they have the sense to dispense with their current leader.