\n<\/p>\n
It was time for Laura Kuenssberg to make a scene. She slammed her dressing room door and went in search of her producer.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust who is that woman in the green room?\u201d she asked. \u201cShe says she\u2019s a guest on the programme.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat must be Kemi Badenoch,\u201d the producer replied.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho\u2019s she?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s this year\u2019s leader of the Tory party.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd why am I talking to her?\u201d said Laura. \u201cCouldn\u2019t we get anyone better?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was her or Chris Philp.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFFS. We can\u2019t 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\u2019 time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it\u2019s their party conference. We have to look as though we\u2019re taking them seriously. Even if no one else is.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOK,\u201d said Laura. \u201cJust this once. We\u2019ll fit her in somewhere near the end. But get me someone better next week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kemi was entirely oblivious to this conversation. She\u2019s oblivious to most things. She imagines she\u2019s 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\u2019s fortunes. Her personal ratings in freefall. She and her party a mere sideshow. A curiosity. Mainly interesting for how much worse they can get.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t really in it, but she was nothing if not professional. Though there was still an undercurrent of tetchiness. This wasn\u2019t her idea of fun.<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 Laura\u2019s mouth opened and closed in amazement at this \u2013 on antisemitism, the conversation turned to Badenoch\u2019s big first-day policy announcements. Deporting 150,000 people a year and leaving the European convention on human rights.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere would the 150,000 people go?\u201d asked Laura.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the least relevant question,\u201d 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\u2019s a peculiar solipsistic variant.<\/p>\n
So it was like this. As it didn\u2019t really matter who she deported \u2013 legal or illegal immigrants, they had all basically just come here to rape our women \u2013 it didn\u2019t 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\u2019t necessarily work. What if other countries didn\u2019t 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\u2019t the rest of us?<\/p>\n
<\/span>This wasn\u2019t Laura Kuenssberg\u2019s idea of fun, but she was nothing if not professional. 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 \u2013 \u201cKemi Badenoch: leader of the Conservative party\u201d. 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?<\/p>\n Badenoch nodded eagerly. Neither the US nor Canada were signatories. It rapidly dawned on Laura that she was dealing with an idiot. Er \u2026 the US and Canada were not in Europe. The clue was in the title. Kemi wasn\u2019t 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 \u2026 That was different from leaving it. We never did get round to discussing the Good Friday agreement.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cI am doing politics differently,\u201d Kemi said defiantly. You can\u2019t 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\u2019ve eliminated all that is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s possible he\u2019s 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can win the next election,\u201d Kemi insisted. Not even a very sweaty Chris Philp looked as if he believed that. It\u2019s going to be a long four days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was time for Laura Kuenssberg to make a scene. She slammed her dressing room door and went in search of her producer. \u201cJust who is that woman in the green room?\u201d she asked. \u201cShe says she\u2019s a guest on the programme.\u201d \u201cThat must be Kemi Badenoch,\u201d the producer replied. \u201cWho\u2019s she?\u201d \u201cShe\u2019s this year\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[15691,3494,263,1161,262,3547,124],"class_list":{"0":"post-26072","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-argue","9":"tag-badenoch","10":"tag-crace","11":"tag-differently","12":"tag-john","13":"tag-kemi","14":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/span> Photograph: Danny Lawson\/PA<\/p>\n