Kemi Badenoch according to some reports is favourite to be the next Tory leader.
She stood in the summer 2022 leadership election after Johnson resigned but dropped out despite or perhaps because of apparent backing from Gove.
She was reported in The Times (12th August 2022) as not overtly supporting Truss but declaring her ‘a maverick who gets things done’. This was certainly true but perhaps not the things Truss actually did in her 49 days.
Badenoch sat in Truss’s Cabinet. One wonders how she now explains all this
The Tory leadership contest which has already been going for quite a while reaches a first milestone on 4th September. Tory MPs will vote with the aim of reducing the existing 6 candidates to 4 by the time of the Tory Conference in a few weeks.
All of the candidates have managed to come out with a range of outlandish hard to far right ideas. As a (Tory) Sunday Times journalist (1st Sept) noted the first step to Tory recovery is that they stop being weird. So far that is not happening. The three leadership candidates who sat in Truss’s 49 day Cabinet, Badenoch, Cleverly and Tugendhat have offered no explanation on what they were doing there.
None of the six candidates were in Parliament before 2010 and so have no experience of Opposition. Further public recognition is low with a fake candidate often doing well in polls.
Does it matter? After all Labour has a massive majority. It matters in the sense that Parliamentary democracy requires a credible Opposition which the Tories are not. Of course that opposition could come to an extent from Plaid, the SNP, Greens, Independent Left and the LibDems.
While extra-Parliamentary Opposition is often associated with the left, that is far from the case around the globe and even in the UK. It wasn’t until Blair’s second term (from memory) that far right inspired farmers for action, fuel protests and the Countryside Alliance were on the streets. We can add to that the fascist fragments that did much to inspire riots in early August.
Politics in the age of social media moves faster.
Meanwhile if the Tories do want to sort themselves out they need something like Peel’s Tamworth Manifesto(1834) issued after their previous worse defeat in 1832. It recognised the need for the Tories to modernise, to be democratic (for the time) and appeal to a wider layer of people. I don’t think there is a Peel amongst the current six leadership contenders however
On Sunday 30th April 1978 following a (quite long, I did it) march from Trafalgar Square to Victoria Park in East London 100,000 people gathered to hear Tom Robinson, the Clash, Steel Pulse, X-Ray Specs etc.
The Carnival organised by Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League without question made an impact in communities and workplaces across the country. Local groups and gigs were organised and the objective to push back the advance of the National Front on the street and at the polls was achieved. Albeit some argue the arrival of Thatcher in 1979 helped and as we know in 2025 its a job that has to be done on repeat and then some.
The impact went wider though. It was featured on the ITV news that evening but none of Monday’s papers carried it. Partly papers just didn’t cover anything like that then, partly it reflected a still continuing bias about what counts as politics and what does not.
However the next edition of the New Musical Express had it on the front page with three pages of coverage inside. Its circulation in 1978? 300,000 copies a week
Thanks to Laura Hadland @Morrighani on Twitter for a reminder that the Campaign for Real Ale was one of the forerunners of the Beard Liberation Front. The above comes from a 1983 edition of the London Drinker.
While times change and CAMRA is now a more diverse and less hirsute campaign, the influence on the BLF which was formed in 1995 is undeniable. BLF Organiser Keith Flett has been a CAMRA member since 1975.
Keir Starmer has revealed to the BBC that another cat is moving into Downing St. Larry the No.10 cat remains in place despite sinister plans being made for his funeral. The Starmer’s existing cat JoJo is already in residence and now Starmer has revealed that a Siberian kitten is joining it.
The Guardian has provided an important update with information from the Siberian Cat Club. Siberian cats are similar to dogs and can be put in a harness and taken for walkies. This provides some colour to the negotations between Starmer and his daughter
Starmer’s daughter wanted a German Shepherd (dog) but Starmer claimed that after negotiations agreement was reached to acquire a kitten.
He also revealed that getting a cat flap installed still remains outstanding as the door is bomb proof.
Starmer’s daughter would be well advised to get representation before any further discussions. With three cats in close proximity its also likely that the services of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) will be required before long.
Kemi Badenoch launched her campaign to be Tory leader on 2nd September.
She survived the initial cull when Tory MPs voted to ‘eliminate’ Priti Patel. The second vote is on 10th September
A feature of the campaign looks set to be Badenoch’s dislike of David Tennant, known for appearing as Dr Who. She dislikes his stand on LGBTQ politics but also it must be strongly suspected his beard
While it is unclear if Badenoch plans to lead a Government of Daleks, it is clear that has laid out her credentials as a beard hater.
This won’t go down well with James Cleverly, known as Jimmy Dimly, but it remains to be seen whether what remains of the Tory membership is pro or anti-beard
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has wished Prime Minister Keir Starmer a happy 62nd Birthday. Reports suggest that his top team failed to do so on Monday morning but the BLF is pleased to mark the occasion particularly for someone with a sustained record of follicle care.
However the campaigners also say that 62 is a good age to grow beard, marking the gravitas of the Prime Ministerial Office.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, while we appreciate that Keir Starmer’s Arsenal still have a mixed record on facial hair, he is now in a position to show what a difference Beard Power can make. What better 62nd Birthday present than a beard?
Tory leadership candidate James Cleverley has claimed that people under 50 don’t vote for the Tories because they are seen as the ‘grumpy’ party.
He is perhaps underselling the Party. Theresa May described the Tories as the nasty party. In another age of political insults altogether Nye Bevan described them as lower than vermin.
Following protests at the 2021 Tory Conference in Manchester the High Court ruled in November 2023 that it was entirely lawful to describe Iain Duncan Smith as ‘Tory scum’. For someone keen on market economics its puzzling why he hasn’t produced a T-Shirt
More in Common polling in July and August found that increasing numbers found the Tories ‘weird’ an echo of the term US Democrat VP candidate Tim Walz has used to describe JD Vance
Peter Mandelson, 70, is reportedly distancing himself from speculation that he might be the next UK Ambassador in Washington. Instead, according to the Times (31st August) he pitching into the contest to be the next Vice Chancellor of Oxford University when the current incumbent Lord Patten retires.
In doing so, consciously or not, he seems to have revisited one of the better known post-1945 debates in British history. In the mid-1960s the New Left Review ran a series of pieces by the late Tom Nairn and Perry Anderson that argued that Britain had had an incomplete bourgeois revolution. Hence the House of Lords, the aristocracy and landed wealth still counted for as much as an industrial ruling class. It followed that a working class in his context was not fully formed. E P Thompson in his essay Peculiarities of the English disagreed and pointed, for example, to the formation of the TUC, the Co-Operatives and later the Labour Party as a indicator that a Labourism came into existence after 1850 precisely to grapple not with the Lords but with the factory owners.
Mandelson clearly views Oxford University through the perspective of Nairn/Anderson. He notes that in the last century there have been nine Vice Chancellors only two of which have not been Tories. He argues there should be more political diversity. He argues that he has a global network and understanding of Government that can get things done at the University. He focuses on the need to raise funds from US philanthropists. The point being that while the Tory Chancellors have been stuck in a parochial past Mandelson can situate Oxford University in the context of a global capitalism
Joint research by the Mirror and the Good Law Project has revealed that Reform UK owner Nigel Farage has four houses in the South of England but none of them are in Clacton where he is an MP. Farage owns the house he shared with his ex-wife, two properties near Dungeness, one of which is reported to be rented out and another rental property in Surrey. The Dungeness houses are in fact officially owned by Farage’s Thorn in the Side company
Of course it is far from unique for both Tory and Labour MPs to be involved in property but Farage styles himself as a man of the people. Landlords of the world unite…
