It’s intriguing to watch the Conservative party treating next month’s local elections in England like a movie in which it has a secret cameo. Please don’t spoil the surprise for the fans! But yes – it turns out it is actually in this film. Who knew? For all of Labour’s many upsets since it came to power, it doesn’t feel as though a single one has been skilfully turned in the Tories’ favour. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is very, very bad – so bad that you can’t even be bothered to come up with anything other than a will-this-do nickname for her. Kemi Very Badenoch.
More often than not since KVB beat Robert Jenrick in the leadership equivalent of Argentina v West Germany, she has seemed to be running the party like a performance art project you really wouldn’t want to see. Sorry – that’s obviously a tautology. We can just say “like a performance art project”. For almost six months now, Badenoch has made a huge deal of the fact that she quite deliberately doesn’t have any policies, instead repeatedly promising the “biggest policy renewal programme in 50 years”. Given what minuscule amount has actually emerged, I’m afraid my ears can now only rearrange that declaration into “I will come up with some policies in about 50 years”.
