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.
