It was time for Laura Kuenssberg to make a scene. She slammed her dressing room door and went in search of her producer.
“Just who is that woman in the green room?” she asked. “She says she’s a guest on the programme.”
“That must be Kemi Badenoch,” the producer replied.
“Who’s she?”
“She’s this year’s leader of the Tory party.”
“And why am I talking to her?” said Laura. “Couldn’t we get anyone better?”
“It was her or Chris Philp.”
“FFS. We can’t keep filling up our show with nobodies. Our ratings will fall through the floor. The Tories are an irrelevance. They might not even exist in a few years’ time.”
“But it’s their party conference. We have to look as though we’re taking them seriously. Even if no one else is.”
“OK,” said Laura. “Just this once. We’ll fit her in somewhere near the end. But get me someone better next week.”
Kemi was entirely oblivious to this conversation. She’s oblivious to most things. She imagines she’s a winner. Someone who can cut through the bullshit and tell people uncomfortable truths. The sharpest of minds. Hard working. If only. The reality is that Kemi has achieved the seemingly impossible: she has taken the Tories even further backwards. The 2024 general election a high point in her party’s fortunes. Her personal ratings in freefall. She and her party a mere sideshow. A curiosity. Mainly interesting for how much worse they can get.
After devoting the first 40 minutes of her Sunday TV show to an interview with Shabana Mahmood, followed by a pre-record of one with two rabbis from Manchester, Kuenssberg reluctantly turned her attention to Badenoch. You could tell her heart wasn’t really in it, but she was nothing if not professional. Though there was still an undercurrent of tetchiness. This wasn’t her idea of fun.
After a brief discussion of the Manchester synagogue attack, in which Kemi claimed that only the Tories had the credibility and competence to be taken seriously – Laura’s mouth opened and closed in amazement at this – on antisemitism, the conversation turned to Badenoch’s big first-day policy announcements. Deporting 150,000 people a year and leaving the European convention on human rights.
“Where would the 150,000 people go?” asked Laura.
“That’s the least relevant question,” replied Kemi. She has never really quite got a grip on the interview format. She still likes to think that she gets to both ask the questions and deliver the answers. That only she knows what the public really wants to hear. It’s a peculiar solipsistic variant.
So it was like this. As it didn’t really matter who she deported – legal or illegal immigrants, they had all basically just come here to rape our women – it didn’t really matter where we sent them. They could go anywhere, as far as she was concerned. And if they got imprisoned or tortured on their return, then so much the better. It saved us the effort. Laura tried to point out that this wouldn’t necessarily work. What if other countries didn’t want them? But Kemi was having none of this. Foreigners would go wherever we told them to. Only the Tories had the credibility and competence. Just remember the stunning success of the Rwanda plan. She said this in all seriousness. If she could forget, then why couldn’t the rest of us?
This wasn’t Laura Kuenssberg’s idea of fun, but she was nothing if not professional.
Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA
By now Kuenssberg was already on autopilot. Just willing the ordeal to be over. At one point a little banner was put up on the screen – “Kemi Badenoch: leader of the Conservative party”. To help all those who were struggling to understand why we were being put through this. Laura looked at her notes. Perhaps we could talk about the ECHR. Did Kemi really want to join Russia and Belarus as the only countries not to be signed up?
Badenoch nodded eagerly. Neither the US nor Canada were signatories. It rapidly dawned on Laura that she was dealing with an idiot. Er … the US and Canada were not in Europe. The clue was in the title. Kemi wasn’t backing down. The US and Canada could have been European if they had wanted to be. In any case, Italy was trying to change the ECHR. Er … That was different from leaving it. We never did get round to discussing the Good Friday agreement.
The Tories were never going to out-Reform Reform, Kuenssberg pointed out. But all her party had managed to do in the past year or so was to play catch-up. There was no coherence to anything. No sense the Conservatives had understood how badly they had failed during their 14 years in government. That the country was still waiting for some kind of acknowledgment. If an apology was off the cards.
“I am doing politics differently,” Kemi said defiantly. You can’t argue with that. Tin-eared, tone-deaf. A determination to learn nothing. A residual belief that sooner or later the country would fall in love with the Tories again, without the party needing to change. All it required was sitting tight and waiting out the tricky patch. Or maybe Kemi is a sleeper agent. Determined to destroy the Tories from within. When you’ve eliminated all that is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
There was the same sense of existential futility inside the conference hall. The place was like a ghost town. The bars and stands empty. As if no one had cared enough to come, apart from those who were contractually obliged to be there. A place where the Tory party had come to witness its own extinction. The conference highlights were ghosts of the past. Some Margaret Thatcher mementoes and a Winston Churchill AI.
The Times columnist and Tory arriviste Matthew Syed tried to galvanise the room. Now was the time for some penitence, which is why Kemi was the only possible leader. Hmm. It’s possible he’s never met Kemi. Either way, it was a curiously flat Kemi who later gave the first of her two conference speeches on the main stage. She seemed bemused by the Autocue, bemused by the lack of energy in the room, bemused by her own speech. She didn’t even seem to realise she had finished. There again, even by her own standards it had been incoherent. The triumph of the Conservative years. The fightback started now. Leave the ECHR.
“We can win the next election,” Kemi insisted. Not even a very sweaty Chris Philp looked as if he believed that. It’s going to be a long four days.
