Coffee House Shots
Could Robert Jenrick overtake Kemi Badenoch?
The Spectator magazine is home to wonderful writing, insightful analysis, and unrivaled books and arts reviews. Subscribe today for just £12 and receive a 12-week subscription in print and online. Alongside that, you get a £20 John Lewis or Waitrose voucher. Go to spectator.co.uk/voucher Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics podcast. I'm Cindy Yu and I'm joined by Katie Bores and Isabelle Hardman. So the Tory leadership contest is down to the six who are going ahead as of this Monday, but there's been a lot of jiggery pokery going on this week. Let's put it that way. The various things people are coming out and saying about her, tell us about that. Yeah, well, I think as we said many times, Kevin Baidon is the parent/front runner. Do you want to be the front runner, tends to mean you have a target on your back, but also more generally, that you just get more attention and more scrutiny? So it doesn't necessarily mean that every single story you see has been planned to buy a rival campaign, but obviously there's always been more interest in the person who looks to say they might be the leader of the opposition than the person who looks to say they don't have much chance. And that means that Kevin Baidonock, who I think is a dynamic politician who divides opinion is having probably the most scrutiny of all the candidates so far. And of course, it's early days and much of that is in the Guardian at the moment. So there's been a series of stories. It began with I think a story they've been working on for some time, which was allegations of intimidating or bullying behavior by civil servants. These are some civil servants who worked in the departments. We actually already knew about that story because Kevin Baidonock had taken to social media. Actually sometimes does on journalism for what was even published to say there's lots of things going on in the Guardian are trying to do a hit job on me effectively. The story came out this week, it's probably worth pointing out that these are accounts from civil servants who did work with her, but at the time no official complaint was made. So I think in terms of our tears of, I don't mean how serious and dismissed what someone has felt and so forth, but I think probably for the story to have the most impact, you would have official complaints lodged, but of course you have these first hand accounts of the fact that people felt that she was very passive aggressive, they felt unpleasant to be around and so forth. Then you had the day two story and this one was a bit more complicated. Kevin Baidonock, the head then was something along the lines of "Cami Baidonock tried to get tax payer flight to go on a holiday," which clearly you're not meant to do, but I think to be fair, if you then looked into the detail of the story, effectively it's when she was on a trip already and it was cheaper to fly onwards to where her family were on holiday and meet them there then to she would argue to fly back which is the more expensive flight and then fly herself. So I think on that one, it's definitely a dividing opinion and some are looking at and saying, "Well, maybe technically it breaks the rules, but the spirit was about how much money are you saving as opposed to how can I get these free trips to go everywhere?" But then also within that, questions about was her ministerial car taking her to the gym a few days a week because they are, they technically meant to do that and then I think today there's another story which was effectively saying that someone in her campaign team, and once she's not very nice word, so I think you take them all together and there's clearly a sense of, you know, people trying to find problems in terms of the campaign not behavior and then some evidence being thrown out that I think probably the trickiest one is just the bullying story. I mean, by far, campaign not is not the first Tory politician, Secretary of State to have bullying allegations and I think probably if you look at the evidence in the Dominic Ralbans and then there was an investigation, that was probably, that was more comprehensive but that is a tricky story in terms of how you treat people and so forth. I think the others, you can, you know, I think that, you know, some people are saying this looks more like a hit job, I was saying, no, actually this is technique against the rules, so I think they're more dividing opinion on how serious they are but I think what is predictable and has happened is, can we be not dismissing much of this? Some of which she didn't confirm her social media account so often I think Isabelle noted this first, can we be in an ox Twitter is effectively a rapid rebuttal unit whereby, you know, if there is a story they don't like a lot of the time is saying why this is wrong and it kind of sums up her quite straight talking about combat of nature. In a way, can we be not being abrupt for someone I think is quite consistent with what we know about her? The question is, are you in the group that sees this as a brilliant asset which is a leader who can cut through the beige-ness of lots of her contemporaries and be authentic, and if that means breaking a few eggs, will you in the group which says, oh no, actually it goes too far the other way and this is, you know, a crisis waiting to happen? Yeah, and Isabelle, this also comes after last week, there were some comments from what seems like a young Kimmy Badernock, an Earth from an online blog from the early 2000s which were pretty punchy views, nothing, nothing necessarily offensive but certainly punchy views. Do you think any of these dossier's, any of this info that's coming out is actually hurting Kimmy Badernock, or actually does it just make her look more like an interesting and actually a candidate who knows what she thinks? Yeah, I mean I think it depends what Conservative MPs think will help their party at this stage after a defeat. So if you have Robert Generic who was nicknamed quite soon after being elected as Robert Generic, who, you know, did become more forceful and theatrical, particularly in his speech after he quit as an immigration minister, we saw a more sort of, I don't know, a sort of more confident attacking side of him when he did that but he is still probably a more boring candidate than Kimmy Badernock and if you want a opposition that's going to sort of do the kind of the plodding work of opposition that's going to, you know, make life reasonably difficult on a sort of technical level for Labour that's going to potentially try to sort of calm down a bit as well, then maybe Generic is, you know, one of the other candidates is a better option. I mean, I think Mel Stryde, the soothing tones of Mel Stryde might be the sort of the biggest unity pitch that we have, but if you want somebody who is going to be attack-a-tack-a-tack-a-tack, some of the time at the opposition, some of the time at anyone else who gets in her way, lots of attention, have lots of energy, be, you know, very charismatic and good at communicating, which is exactly what Badernock is, then you go for someone like her and I guess within what I've just said there's nothing really about whether or not this person would win the Conservatives the next election or not. I think a lot of them are in the place at the moment where they think that the next election is going to be a bit like it was for them in 2001 where it wasn't, you know, it was just not a prospect that the Conservatives were going to beat Labour after just five years of Labour being in government. However, others may think that things will fall apart much quicker for Kierstalmer and that he is in a sort of, you know, slightly miserable honeymoon period compared to how things will be once Rachel Reeves announces, you know, tax rights are spending cuts in the autumn and once the sort of grinding reality of government is going to dawn on people who haven't been in government before. So I don't think we're in a place where people are necessarily saying we're electing a sort of, you know, a caretaker and Michael Howard and what impact that has on where they go is really interesting and then obviously we have to talk about the Conservative activist base because, you know, where are they mentally and it's much harder to work that out at this stage. Often MPs come back from an election defeat with a very different view of what was said to them on the doorstep to activists. It's entirely possible to have the same conversation with a voter and come away with complete different conclusions about what they were trying to tell you was your problem and so we don't know where the activists will sort of go in terms of the kind of opposition leader and, you know, repair job that they think is necessary. And I think, of course, all the candidates are saying that they could be the candidate that gets the Tories back into government by the next election. You have Robert Genrecht launching today doing his official launch in Newark where he is an MP and in his speech, that is the point he is making, which is saying they say Sir Kistammer is guaranteed a decade in Downing Street. We have a mountain to climb, but actually if we show the country we know where we went wrong and have learned our lessons, goes on a bit, I'm fast paraphrasing reading, then not in two terms, not in a decade, but we're back in power in the next general election. So you have lots of them saying it. I don't, anyone's going to say, oh, I'm the candidate that compares, gathers back in three terms. It doesn't really put you in a great place in the lineup. I think the question is, what do they, to his of us, point, what do they need most in the next couple of years? Because you speak to people who are thinking, I know quite a few MPs who are torn between Robert Genrecht and Kami Badenock and Kami Badenock is effectively the candidate there. If you're imagining on stage next to Niederfraj on one side, Kistammer on the other, I think she's a candidate they would most like to just have a pick at them both and probably could take them both down a peg or two. I think there's a sense that is Robert Genrecht going to be able to outflank Niederfraj if he is moving the party in that direction? That's a doubt. But would Kami Badenock be able to do the rest of it? So therefore, in the story so far, I don't think they have been hugely damaging to her chances in terms of MPs, but it's more, if you like already, then you dismiss it as a smear and say, well, look, this is just further science that she is authentic and so forth from people who are out to get her. If you find her problematic already, then it's further evidence to that. So I haven't spoken to anyone yet where a story that has come out has changed a perception of her either way. And Isabel, the bookies are saying actually that Robert Genrecht has overtaken Kami as the favourite. The receive wisdom is that a right-wing candidate and a more moderate, one-nation candidate goes through to the members. But could we actually be in a situation where Genrecht overtakes Kami as the right-wing candidates, as Katie says, MPs seem to be deciding between the two of them? Well, you have got the sabotage attempts on Robert Genrecht's campaign from those who are basically trying to say that he's extremely left-wing, that he was cosplaying a right-wing person. I think that is still a major factor and I think that's a really interesting thing about the dynamic in the Conservative Party overall and will be the case, I think, for a few years, where you're having a debate about who is really a Conservative. And this has always been a really interesting thing about the Tories, is I remember sitting with Tory MPs in the David Cameron years where they were saying, "Well, he's not really a Conservative." Their definition of what a real Conservative is is probably much narrower than the rest of the country, but they always suspect that they're being infiltrated by post-liberal Democrats who sort of through birth wouldn't vote Lib Den, but who are basically that. And so that does, if you've got somebody who's worked with a candidate saying, "Oh, actually they're much more left-wing than you'd expect," that does have quite a lot of purchase with Conservative MPs. And I think given we've had a technocrat as a Prime Minister, as a Conservative leader, where she's soon out, and a lot of Conservative MPs, even those who really liked him, their main complaint was that, "I want to get behind him. I just don't know who he is or what he stands for." And I think you are going to have a big debate about what real conservatism is, and obviously the big factor in that is reform as well, because you have a party that's not pretending to be Conservative, but is a right-wing challenger party that will say, if you don't think these guys are the future of cent right-wing politics anymore, then you don't need to be part of it. You can come over to us. Look, we've got MPs, we're not a one-man band anymore. And so the impact of the reform dynamic within politics is going to be significant. As well, and Katie, thanks very much. And thank you very much for listening at home. If you liked this podcast, do give us a rating and review. [MUSIC]