Good morning. While it is never difficult to distinguish between a disgruntled Kemi Badenoch and a little ray of sunshine, the contrast this week has been especially acute. Since Sunday, the business secretary has been having a remarkably public fight with Henry Staunton, the Post Office chairman she fired last month. Staunton says that he was ordered to stall on compensation payouts to postmasters until the government had “limped into” the next general election; Badenoch begs to differ. But she doesn’t just say that Staunton has got it wrong. She says that he is lying.
With that unambiguous response, Badenoch took a difficult but knotty story for the government and turned it into a fundamental test of the protagonists’ integrity. Yesterday, the row became a central subject at prime minister’s questions – and Rishi Sunak declined to repeat her allegations against Staunton. Meanwhile, Staunton and the civil servant he met with have produced rival accounts of what happened.
Today’s newsletter, with the Guardian’s political correspondent Eleni Courea, explains what we know about the latest subplot to the Post Office scandal – and what the row tells us about the sources of Badenoch’s political strength. Seconds out, and here are the headlines.
Five big stories
UK politics | The speaker of the House of Commons issued an unprecedented apology after a fractious and occasionally chaotic parliamentary debate on Gaza. MPs voted unanimously for a Labour motion calling for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire”, but only after Lindsay Hoyle upended precedent to allow the party to bring its motion to a vote, to the fury of SNP and Conservative MPs. Read Kiran Stacey’s account of the day.
Israel-Gaza war | The UN’s World Food Programme was forced to suspend plans to deliver critical food aid to northern Gaza because of a breakdown in public order amid acute “hunger and desperation” across the battered territory. The delivery of 10 convoys of food aid was suspended earlier this week after trucks were looted by crowds, a driver was beaten and gunfire reported.
Menopause | Employers could be sued for disability discrimination if they fail to make “reasonable adjustments” for women going through menopause under new guidance issued by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) on Thursday, amid concern over the number of women leaving their jobs due to symptoms.
UK news | The broadcaster Dan Wootton has been cleared of alleged criminal behaviour after the Metropolitan police decided to take no action after a six-month investigation. Wootton claimed that the allegations of sexual offences were the result of a “politically motivated witch-hunt”.
Conservatives | Boris Johnson withdrew from a debate with Tucker Carlson, the US right wing pundit who interviewed Vladimir Putin after the death of Alexei Navalny, having previously agreed to the event for a $1m fee which his team says would have gone to charities for Ukrainian veterans.
In depth: ‘She has an eye on leadership – but if this gets worse, it will damage her’
The row between Kemi Badenoch and Henry Staunton started in the Sunday Times (£), and an interview in which the former Post Office chair said that in January last year he had been told by “a fairly senior person” that he should “stall on spend on compensation and on the replacement of Horizon, and to limp … into the election.” Given the strength of public feeling that the postmasters prosecuted as a result of the defective Horizon accounting system should be properly compensated, and ongoing complaints that claims are being processed too slowly, that was an incendiary allegation.
Kemi Badenoch was not business secretary at the time – that was Grant Shapps. But as Shapps’ successor, she had taken the decision to fire Staunton, who said she justified the decision by telling him that “someone’s got to take the rap for this”.
Soon after the story was published, she tweeted a lengthy thread on X, calling Staunton’s account of their call last month a “disgraceful misrepresentation” and saying that his interview was “full of lies”. She also said that he was fired “due to very serious allegations about his conduct” that he sought to block an investigation into – allegations that Staunton says have never been mentioned to him.
In parliament the next day, Badenoch went further: Staunton’s claims that he was told to delay payments were “wild baseless allegations” and “a blatant attempt to seek revenge following dismissal”. “If such a thing was said, it is for Mr Staunton himself to bring the evidence,” she added.
But then Staunton did produce evidence – and so did the civil servant he met with, Sarah Munby. The disparity between them is at the heart of why the fight isn’t over yet.
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Did Badenoch mislead parliament?
Badenoch’s comments in the House of Commons implied that Staunton’s claims had been made up from whole cloth. But notes Staunton emailed to himself and colleagues shortly after a meeting with Munby, then the business department permanent secretary – long before he knew his reputation might rest on them – offer corroboration for much of what he says.
The email said that when it came to dealing with the Post Office’s parlous financial position, Munby said “that in the run-up to the election there was no appetite to ‘rip off the band aid’.” Staunton said he was told: “Now was not the time for dealing with long-term issues.” And he claims Munby told him the Post Office “needed a plan to ‘hobble’ up to the election.”
According to Staunton, he understood “long-term issues” to include the compensation payouts. Against that is a letter from Munby to Badenoch yesterday, which says that she never “explicitly or implicitly” suggested that Staunton delay the payments and appends a contemporaneous formal note of the meeting as evidence.
“By mentioning there being ‘no appetite’ to rip off the band-aid, that could be understood to mean a ministerial message,” Eleni Courea said. “But there is a lot of room for different accounts here – the government can dispute whether the note is accurate, whether it was sanctioned by a minister, and whether it was actually referring to what he thought it was referring to. Staunton’s note doesn’t specify delaying compensation payments.” It’s also worth noting that the government says that compensation funds aren’t drawn from the Post Office’s budget anyway.
The other possibility, of course, is that this is simply a miscommunication – although it’s not implausible that Munby correctly got the hint, which was left unsaid precisely so that it would be deniable. (For more on what this shows about the shortcomings of how the government communicates, see Rowena Mason’s excellent analysis.)
Barring the release of further evidence, the ambiguities make it hard to see that Badenoch is likely to be found to have misled parliament. But by the same token, the note published by Staunton leaves ample room for those who believe he is telling the truth.
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Why did Badenoch say Henry Staunton was ‘full of lies’?
While there is no smoking gun about Staunton’s allegations, you might expect that a typically cautious minister would have been careful before calling him a liar without very solid grounds. As well as the primary question of whether Badenoch had enough evidence to support what she said, we might also ask about the political wisdom of adding so much fuel to the fire.
“She went extraordinarily hard at him and turned it into a massive row,” Eleni said. “So you would think she must feel very confident in what she’s saying. A more reserved response probably wouldn’t have led to him releasing the note from his meeting.”
So keen was the minister to weigh in, in fact, that she replaced minister Kevin Hollinrake, who typically leads for the government on the Post Office scandal, to give the statement to parliament at the last minute.
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What does the story tell us about Badenoch?
Did we mention that she relishes a bunfight? “I wouldn’t say that her tweets on Sunday looked like a strategy,” Eleni said. “It’s a reaction to seeing this big interview and the explosive claims in it. But it is definitely in line with her style of politics.”
A reputation for telling it like it is, especially on “culture war” issues, may be no bad thing for a Conservative minister’s prospects. The problem for Badenoch is if that begins to be seen as a pattern of unreliability and overstatement on all sorts of subjects.
In 2021, she called a HuffPost journalist “creepy and bizarre” for sending perfectly conventional questions to her press officer and accused her of “making up claims” even though no story was published. When Labour MP Kate Osborne accused her of comparing young people coming out as transgender to “the spread of a disease” because of her use of the word “epidemic”, Badenoch called her a liar six times. And this week, the Canadian high commissioner in London has written to MPs (£) to say that trade talks she claimed were underway with Canada had in fact been “unilaterally paused” by the UK.
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Will all of this hurt Badenoch politically?
In the short-term, Badenoch appears to be in a pickle. While Rishi Sunak did not part ways from her when asked about the Post Office affair by Keir Starmer yesterday, he repeatedly declined to repeat her allegations: the Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow wrote that “Sunak did not quite cut her loose. But he said about the bare minimum necessary to defend her without his lack of enthusiasm becoming too obvious.” Munby’s letter is clearly helpful to her cause; whether the controversy deepens depends on what else Staunton has to say.
In the long term, though, Badenoch may not mind any of this too much. Perhaps because of her pugnacious approach, she regularly tops polls of the Conservative membership’s favourite ministers, and she is the bookies’ favourite to succeed Sunak should the Tories lose the next election.
“Someone who’s close to her told me that the advice from people around her is to lay low and make sure she doesn’t disagree with Sunak – but just to get on with her department,” said Eleni. If so, there may be a tension between what plays well with the members, and what will endear her to Conservative MPs, some of whose support she will ultimately need to get on the ballot. “This is interesting in that context. She certainly has an eye on a future leadership contest, and she is very popular – but if this gets any worse, it will damage her.”
What else we’ve been reading
Like every kind of relationship, friendships can be hard – people grow apart or say hurtful things or simply get on each others nerves. In these moments, Elle Hunt asks whether we are too quick to dump our friends when they do not live up to our idealised representations of them. Nimo
New Guardian US columnist Mehdi Hasan begins with a persuasive piece on the leverage Joe Biden has over Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza – but which he has so far refused to use. Despite Biden’s “feigned powerlessness,” he writes, the value of US weaponry and intelligence to Israel mean that he could “end the current carnage with a single phone call”. Archie
In 2020, Oregon began an experiment by decriminalising possession of small amounts of hard drugs and spending hundreds of millions of dollars into substance abuse treatment. The backlash to what was once hailed a progressive and compassionate approach to addiction has grown steadily and politicians are considering reinstating criminalisation. Katia Riddle reports on why the state turned on its own bill. Nimo
As a new Netflix series based on her Guardian podcast Can I Tell You A Secret? is released, Sirin Kale writes that the problem of stalking is no closer to being resolved: just 1.4% of reported stalkers are ever convicted. “What underpins all of this is a rich seam of misogyny,” she writes. “Men ... who feel entitled to women’s time, their attention, their bodies and sometimes even their lives.” Archie
Jason Okundaye shrewdly reflects on the documentary Garms: Black Culture’s Influence on British Fashion and the legacy that Black British designers carry with them through their clothes. Nimo
Sport
Football | Liverpool extended their lead at the top of the Premier League to four points thanks to four second-half goals in a storming 4-1 comeback win over Luton. In the Champions League, a stunning injury time goal from Galeno (above) gave Porto a 1-0 lead in the first leg of their last 16 match against Arsenal, and a goal for Barcelona from Robert Lewandowski was cancelled out by a Victor Osimhen equaliser for Napoli.
Tennis | Andy Murray’s considerable efforts to rebuild his faltering form took a crushing blow on Wednesday at the Qatar Open, as he lost in three sets against Czech teenager Jakub Mensik – at three hours and 24 minutes, the longest match in the tournament’s history.
Football | A sculpture of Harry Kane was commissioned by Waltham Forest council in 2019, completed the following year at an expense of £7,200 but is yet to appear anywhere in public. The council claim that they are unable to find a suitable location for the statue of the local hero.
The front pages
On the Guardian’s front page it’s “Fury in Commons forces speaker to apologise over Gaza vote chaos” as many of the papers cover the scenes in parliament on Wednesday. The Telegraph’s headline is “Speaker on brink after walkout” as it says Sir Lindsay Hoyle is fighting to keep his job. The Financial Times also headlines on the story saying “Walkout over Gaza motion brings chaos to Commons”. In the i it’s a similar headline with “Commons chaos as MPs walk out of Gaza vote”.
In the Times the headline is “Respect the menopause or be sued, firms told” as the paper covers new guidance issued by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The Mail has “Bosses must make allowances for menopausal woman” as it leads on the same story.
The Sun has “King’s Tears” as the monarch says messages and cards of support while he continues cancer treatment has left him in tears. And in the Mirror the headline is “Del of a win” as the paper reports on a couple’s celebrations after winning the lottery.
Today in Focus
Is an uprising by Europe’s farmers sowing the seeds for the far right?
Furious farmers across Europe have blocked roads and railways as part of protests against new regulations and cheap imports. Michael Safi speaks to Jon Henley
Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Last August wildfires raged through Maui, Hawaii, leaving 11,000 people displaced, 100 dead and many more struggling with food insecurity. Though the Red Cross has been providing meals to alleviate some pressure, the food they gave out was often western or American, a reflection of the island’s pervasive tourism culture. In response to the lack of traditional Hawaiian meals available, some local groups have been working to make sure survivors can access healthy, sustainably grown food.
One such group is Maui Hub, a farmbox service created during the pandemic lockdown. It has fundraised enough money to help roughly a hundred displaced families with free groceries for the next year. The Maui Hub is part of a broader Indigenous-led land back movement that started before the wildfires, to construct a circular food economy to boost climate resilience and public health, while reducing Maui’s unsustainable over dependence on tourism – which is driving the housing crisis and exacerbating water shortages.
“We want to make life easier for our traumatised community … we need them to build back better or else Lahaina could end up worse,” said Kekona.
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