KEMI BADENOCH has reassured her restless MPs that it will require some time to address issues within the party. She compared her initial challenges in the role to the tough start that the first female leader of the Tories, Margaret Thatcher, encountered.
After being six months in what is currently considered one of the most challenging roles in politics, the latest polls show worrying results. Recent surveys suggest that Reform is at 25 percent, Labour at 24 percent, and the Conservatives at only 21 percent.
The upcoming local elections next week are anticipated to be extremely demanding. The Tories are expected to lose the council seats that were previously secured during Boris Johnson’s successful vaccine rollout.
But a defiant Mrs Badenoch today reminds jittery MPs that even their heroine Mrs Thatcher took a while to get into her stride before maturing into the formidable Iron Lady.
Speaking to The Sun at the end of a week when she landed a solid blow on Sir Keir Starmer over women’s rights, she said: “I’ve been reading a lot about Mrs Thatcher’s time in opposition.
“People remember her at her heyday. They don’t remember what it was like when she first started.
“I’ve been speaking to a lot of people who worked with her then, and they said it was really, really tough.
“And that’s what I’ve been expecting. That’s what’s happening.”
She added: “It’s going to take some time to rebuild trust, but the party is unifying under my leadership.
“I am enjoying it, and every day I’m getting better.”
‘PM couldn’t acknowledge he got something wrong’
That progress has been noticed — with even doubting MPs cheering her on last week as she took the fight to Labour, seizing on the Supreme Court ruling ten days ago that the legal definition of a woman should be based on biological sex.
In the Commons bear pit she put the PM on the ropes for backtracking on comments he made three years ago when he said sex was based on both biology and self-identification, and women could have a penis.
When asked if she thinks Sir Keir has a so-called “woman problem” she replied without skipping a beat: “Yes,” pointing to the way feminist MP Rosie Duffield was effectively driven out of the Labour Party for refusing to agree with trans dogma.
She added: “I think you can learn a lot about Keir Starmer by the way that he’s treated Rosie Duffield.
“This was a woman who was constructively dismissed from that party for saying she believed in biological sex.
Now the Supreme Court has ruled what she’s been saying [is correct], he couldn’t even apologise, couldn’t even acknowledge that he got something wrong.
“And if you’ve got something wrong, you should be able to say, ‘Actually, we got this wrong’.”
And the Tory leader challenged the Prime Minister to pick up the phone and call campaigners such as JK Rowling and campaign group For Women Scotland, who brought the legal action, to make an apology.
Mrs Badenoch, who sat down to talk to me during a visit to a factory unit in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, said her first five months as leader had been a “rollercoaster”.
She is on the road as her husband Hamish carries out the domestic jobs — juggling childcare and cooking — having quit his job with a major bank so that he could work from home looking after an investment portfolio.
She added: “I always knew that it would be challenging. Lots of people said, ‘Don’t do this’.
But my worry was that there wouldn’t even be a Conservative Party in a few years if we just left it and just had a break.”
She speaks of the challenge on the right from Reform, the battle against apathy for politics and a huge economic challenge with other countries and regions such as China and the Middle East out-competing the UK as she strives to make the country “dynamic”.
But despite all the tough talk, there is one immovable truth — Kemi Badenoch is struggling to cut through.
Lagging behind both Labour and Reform, Tory MPs are starting to whisper about deals to “unite the Right”.
Yet their leader insists that any electoral pact with Nigel Farage’s party is off the table, warning that voters are put off by backroom stitch-ups for the sake of power.
Continual questions about a deal are raised — even by her Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick this week.
They were ready for an election. They weren’t ready for government
Kemi on Labour
But she said: “Reform has said that it wants to destroy the Conservative Party.
“If someone says that they want to destroy you or destroy your family, you don’t rush in looking at how to do deals with them, you give them a wide berth.
“We need to make sure that we have a credible offer to the public. When we are talking about coalitions before an election, what the public hate is stitch-ups.
“They think, ‘These politicians are not interested in looking after us, they are just looking at how they get into power’.
“And that’s how things have gone wrong, just thinking about winning rather than what you are going to do to deliver afterwards.
“That’s what’s happened to Labour. They were ready for an election. They weren’t ready for government.”
But Mrs Badenoch also finds time to aim fire at the Government’s negotiations with the EU ahead of a summit next month.
Sir Keir has faced criticism from his opponent over his “back-door surrender” to allowing free movement of under-30s between Britain and the EU under plans for a youth mobility scheme.
She is also furious about giving away even fishing rights to the bloc after the hard-fought Brexit victory.
Mrs Badenoch said: “Everything I’ve seen Labour negotiate, whether it’s the Chagos Islands or this AstraZeneca [UK vaccine plant] deal that the previous Conservative government had negotiated, they just make a mess of everything.
“They get the unions in, unions advise them on what to do.
“So I worry very much about about what they are going to do on fishing.
“That would be terrible for a lot of places like Devon, Cornwall and Lincolnshire.
“You look at how so much was fought for, for places like Grimsby, and it will be for nothing if Keir Starmer backslides on that.”
She also has Energy Secretary Ed Miliband in her sights over the Government’s quest for Net-Zero carbon emissions by 2050, and vowed to press ahead with new North Sea oil and gas drilling licences and opening the door to fracking in the future.
When asked if the Government should ditch their eco plans, she said: “Yes, they should. But I don’t think they will because they don’t understand that government doesn’t create growth, business does.
“They think they can generate growth from this agenda, even though the way they’re going, it will bankrupt the country.”
She added that by not reversing a ban on oil and gas licences, ministers are making us “less independent” when it comes to energy supply.
But as a mum, Mrs Badenoch has equally pressing things to deal with away from Westminster and her North West Essex constituency — especially when it comes to policing her three youngsters aged between five and 12.
Everything I’ve seen Labour negotiate, whether it’s the Chagos Islands or this AstraZeneca [UK vaccine plant] deal that the previous Conservative government had negotiated, they just make a mess of everything
Kemi Badenoch
Our interview comes after campaigners criticised media regulator Ofcom’s new rules on online child safety as being too weak, insisting that parents need more help.
She said: “The family is the beginning of all of life and ordering in society.
“But it’s not that easy for parents. We need to make it easier for them. I am a very, very tech-savvy parent, and I’m constantly working hard to manage the way my children access the internet.
“None of them are on social media.
“I don’t give them smartphones to use to get on the internet.
“If they do want to, they have to use mine. It’s under supervision. But not every parent knows how to work the phones to create restrictions and things like that.
“So social media companies definitely need to do more.”
Our time is up, as Mrs Badenoch needs to hit the road for more election campaigning. She could knock on a million doors and next week’s result would still be brutal.
But is she a quitter? In the words of her Tory hero: No, No, No.
Kemi fact file
Name: Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke Badenoch
Born: Jan 2, 1980, in Wimbledon.
Parents: Father a GP and later boss of publishing firm, mother a professor of physiology.
Childhood: Lagos & the US. Came to the UK aged 16.
Education: A levels at Phoenix College, South London; University of Sussex (master’s degree in computer engineering); Birkbeck, University of London (Bachelor of Laws degree).
Work: McDonald’s, Royal Bank of Scotland, Coutts Bank, The Spectator magazine.
Political career: Joined Tory party at 25. Member of London Assembly, 2015-17; elected as MP for Saffron Walden, 2017; ministerial roles, 2019-2023; Tory leader 2024.
Family: Husband Hamish, a banker, three children.
