It must be exhausting to be Kemi Badenoch. That never-ending surge of rage. Not the slightest effort to keep it repressed. Who knows what someone must have done to Kemi when she was young to leave her that badly damaged? She is a woman in urgent need of a therapist. Before she creates even more havoc. There is no feud, no imagined slight, no minor disagreement even, that she won’t pursue to the ends of the earth. She can never dream of saying sorry. She lives in a binary world of death or glory. There are no half measures. Kemi has yet to discover an occasion where she once might have been wrong. Where the facts are open to interpretation. She lives for the thrill of the fight. She is that Tory oxymoron. A passionate defender of free speech. Except where there is some criticism being made of her. Then it is something that must be stamped out. Vengeance shall be hers. In some parts of the Conservative party – primarily the intellectually deprived – Badenoch is what amounts to the Last Hope. The last woman standing after the annihilation of the next election, who will rise from the ashes to lead them back into their own funeral pyre. The leader hell-bent on self-destruction. There are still a handful of MPs who are aroused by the thought of a suicide mission. One driven by fury. If Badenoch does have friends in low places– she is, after all, a member of the Evil Plotters WhatsApp group despite insisting she remains loyal to Rishi Sunak at every turn – there weren’t that many of them in the Commons to hear her ministerial response to the Sunday Times interview in which Henry Staunton, the sacked Post Office chair, had claimed he had been under orders to delay compensation payments. Just a sad triumvirate of Conor Burns, Lee Anderson and Brendan Clarke-Smith. Not that Kemi was bothered by the lack of support. She had her outrage – her ever-faithful companion – as her comfort blanket. No woman could need more. She could barely contain herself from the moment she set foot in the chamber. Itching for the speaker to give her the nod. To let slip the dogs of the latest culture war. She briefly had to remind herself of what she was so furious about this time. An understandable hesitation as it’s so hard to keep up. Only that morning she had written a hate screed in the Daily Mail about the actor Michael Sheen daring to suggest that steelworkers were having a rough time. How dare a Welshman speak about Wales!
Then the business secretary connected with her latest rage fest. Staunton. Yes, she was sorry that Sky and the Daily Mail should have found out about her decision to sack Staunton before she had told him herself. Kemi was mystified how this had happened. After all, she didn’t know anyone at the Daily Mail apart from the editor, for whom she regularly writes. It must be so irritating to be thought to be one of the leakiest members of the cabinet – a minister always happy to give an unattributed quote – when to do such a thing would never cross your mind. As for Staunton’s claims that the government had needed someone at the Post Office to take the rap for the Horizon scandal and had also ordered him to delay the compensation payments till after the election, that was all a lie. Badenoch looked across the chamber, daring anyone to disagree with her. Begging them to disagree with her. She had a semi-automatic assault rifle by her side and she wasn’t afraid to use it. Labour’s shadow business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, chose not to engage. He wasn’t entirely convinced that Kemi was telling the truth – she isn’t noted for her veracity – but he couldn’t bring himself to get caught in the crossfire. So he muttered a few platitudes about taking Badenoch’s word for it and looking forward to her supplying documentary evidence. Kemi looked almost disappointed that he had caved in so easily. Others weren’t so easily bought off, though. Some Labour – and a few Tory – MPs pointed out that many Post Office operatives were having problems with slow and derisory compensation claims. Hell, even the Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake, sitting loyally if nervously by Kemi’s side, had reported that the government had been slow to deal with the scandal before the ITV drama. Something the business secretary had just brazenly denied. “What’s your fucking problem, you fucking fucks?” was the subtext of almost every subsequent exchange that Kemi had. She even managed to pick a fight with Kevan Jones, one of the few MPs to have emerged with credit from the Horizon scandal. A man who had done more to try to win cross-party support for the post office operatives than almost anyone else in Westminster. But in Kemi world, you’re either with her or against her. And daring to suggest that he would like to see some hard evidence before offering her his support crossed a line. It was all very well slagging off Staunton in the Commons where she was protected by parliamentary privilege. Let’s see her do it elsewhere. Preferably not on Twitter, where Kemi has also been known to have extended rants Badenoch shook her head. This was just political point scoring. Something she would never do. And how dare Labour also suggest the government was delaying compensation for the infected blood scandal till after the election. Even though we all know it to be true. But that’s the Kemi enigma. Even the truth is a personal attack on her integrity. Especially the truth. The truth cannot be tolerated. So Lee Anderson came to her rescue. Accusing Labour of doing something it hadn’t done. Poor Lee. He really isn’t the sharpest pencil. Still, Kemi was having a better time of it than the unfortunate Bim Afolami. The no-mark junior treasury minister who was forced to answer an urgent question on the government’s magnificent achievement on tipping the economy into recession. Jeremy Hunt was nowhere to be seen – he’s a genuine liability these days – and the quarter-witted Laura Trott was in remedial debt classes. So Nice But Dim Bim was forced to take the hit. It was an embarrassment. Everything was going to plan. Just no one had understood the plan was to bankrupt the country. And yes, things could be better. Indeed they could. We could have Rachel Reeves as chancellor. A serious grown-up. As it was, Dim Bim was laughed at for the best part of 45 minutes. There is no greater humiliation.