Kemi Badenoch is a member of a Conservative WhatsApp group called “Evil Plotters” despite telling party rebels to “stop messing around” and get behind Rishi Sunak, the Guardian can reveal.
The business secretary, who consistently comes out as the favourite cabinet minister in polls of Tory members, has criticised party colleagues for “stirring” up suggestions that she could replace the prime minister.
In a round of broadcast interviews on Sunday, she dismissed speculation over the plot to topple Sunak as “Westminster tittle-tattle” and said colleagues who put her name forward as an alternative were “not my friends”.
However, the Guardian has been told that Badenoch and Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, who is regarded as a key backer, are members of a WhatsApp group of similarly minded Tory MPs who are rallying round the business secretary’s longer-term ambitions.
Tory sources said that while Badenoch was not actively plotting to remove Sunak before the next election, her team was ready to “leap into action” should the prime minister be forced out, or if he stood down as party leader following an election defeat.
Speculation has swirled at Westminster after a group of anonymous Tory donors funded a poll suggesting Sunak was leading his party to electoral oblivion at the next election, prompting speculation over who may be behind a plot. There is no suggestion Badenoch is involved.
However, the Guardian understands that when Suella Braverman was sacked as home secretary two months ago, some of Badenoch’s allies advised her to lie low and wait for the row to blow over so that she would emerge as “the reasonable face” of the Tory right.
“Kemi won’t try to oust Rishi herself, she knows that the hand that wields the knife never wears the crown,” said one Tory insider. “But she’s got a campaign ready for when the moment does eventually come.”
One friend of Badenoch suggested that while she had not explicitly instructed her allies to plan and prepare for a leadership campaign, she had given them the nod to continue. “It will be with her permission rather than at her behest,” they said.
“She won’t be having meetings with people saying”: ‘When are we setting up the phone banks?’ She finds all of that distasteful. She isn’t going to be doing what Penny Mordaunt is doing, which is endless little drinks parties stroking people’s egos. She hates that.”
Tory MPs say Badenoch remains close to Gove, despite reports last year that the pair had fallen out, and that they have re-established a working relationship and speak regularly.
In recent weeks they have also messaged on the Evil Plotters WhatsApp group, perhaps an ironic nod to the former cabinet minister Nadine Dorries’ book The Plot, which claimed Gove was trying to install Badenoch as leader, which allies of both have denied.
The business secretary also holds regular lunches with her key MP backers, believed to include the housing minister, Lee Rowley, the digital minister, Julia Lopez, the Cabinet Office minister Alex Burghart, and the Tory deputy chair for women, Rachel Maclean.
They were among the MPs who supported her during the Tory leadership contest to take over from Boris Johnson, when she made it to the final four. Rowley, who was Badenoch’s campaign manager in 2022, is said to have continued unofficially in the role.
James Roberts, the former chief of the TaxPayers’ Alliance who ran Badenoch’s list of endorsements in 2022, joined her team as a special adviser in June 2023, with sources suggesting he is “still working on leadership stuff” despite his official role.
A spokesperson for Badenoch did not deny the WhatsApp group claim but said: “This is exactly the sort of stirring Kemi was referring to when she told people to stop messing around on Sunday.
“Having lunch, speaking to MPs, and having a parliamentary special adviser is not a plot, it is the day-to-day job of being a secretary of state. This utter nonsense is clearly part of a targeted campaign against Kemi and anyone reading it should treat it as such.”
On a tour of the broadcast studios on Sunday, Badenoch did not deny having aspirations for the top job, telling the BBC: “If you’d asked me two years ago in January 2022 I would have laughed it off and said it was a completely crazy idea.
“You never really know these things until you’re in the moment. What I would remind people is that after Liz Truss left I stood up and said I’m not running again; Rishi’s the person who should do the job. I did so because I worked with him [at] the Treasury, I knew he had a handle on the economy.”
She also said that speculation among Tory colleagues about her ambitions was “all a distraction”, telling Sky News: “They need to stop messing around and get behind the leader.
“The fact of the matter is most people in the country are not interested in all of this Westminster tittle-tattle. Quite frankly, the people who keep putting my name in there are not my friends. They don’t care about me. They don’t care about my family or what this would entail. They are just stirring.”
On Tuesday, the former cabinet minister Simon Clarke, a Liz Truss ally, claimed the Tories faced electoral “massacre” under Sunak. The latest turmoil for the Tory leader was triggered by the opinion poll that put his party on course for a 1997-style wipeout.
At the same time, the Tory peer David Frost argued that the party would “lose and lose bad unless we do something about it”. He was named as the contact on the YouGov research, but it was commissioned by a mysterious group calling itself the Conservative Britain Alliance.
Lord Frost is understood to have been warned by Nicholas True, the Conservative whip in the Lords, that he could have the Tory whip withdrawn if the donors behind the group had given money to Nigel Farage’s Reform party. Frost has refused to provide names.
Sources at Tory headquarters said Frost was hoping to be selected for Basildon and Billericay, the party’s 35th safest seat, but raised doubts over whether he would be permitted. “It’s very difficult to see how he would stand as a candidate,” one said.
