I was walking the dog across our common on Monday morning – autumn is well and truly here when the leaves are the same colour as the cockapoo – when a young family came towards me. Three delightful children playing boisterously in the drizzle and vaguely meandering along behind a figure in padded jacket and cap who was striding ahead. He was a type I recognised immediately: Half-Term Dad.
While Mum is away working, Half-Term Dad picks up the childcare baton, knowing that this is the role he must fulfil as a loyal supportive partner, while also secretly wondering, “Dear God, how can it still only be 11am? That leaves another eight hours to keep the kids entertained before X gets home.”
Dads of his generation have come a long way and most are now brilliant at doing their share (often more than, actually), but who can blame them if they occasionally have the mien of a smoking dog in a laboratory; aware that such experiments must be conducted for the greater good of mankind while privately wishing they could be cosily in the office, safe from Pokemon and the 98th screening of Frozen, as their own fathers were.
For her part, the working mother will be busy doing her job but with a skein of guilt woven through her day; she will wonder how Half-Term Dad is getting on (“Don’t let them have your iPad!”) while knowing how much the kids would love it if she was there and they were all together as a family.
Those were my thoughts as Half-Term Dad and his cheery little platoon walked past me when, a few seconds later, the penny dropped. Wow. The children’s mother was at work alright, I twigged, but work of a rather special and demanding kind. Mummy was in the home straight of the race to become the leader of the oldest political party in the world and on track, God willing, to save the nation from the damp blight of Starmerite Socialism. Half-Term Dad was none other than Hamish Badenoch and that sweet trio, two girls and a boy, are Kemi’s.
Kemi Badenoch, who is the MP for my town of Saffron Walden, would not wish to be defined, let alone limited, by the fact that she’s a mother of three young children. Quite rightly, though, she wrestles, as all working mothers must, with the two most important roles in her life. She told Sky News this week that she has been thinking about what effect her aiming to become prime minister will have on the children because it’s “not a normal job”. That was refreshingly honest, which is strength not weakness in my book. Sir Christopher Chope recently accused Kemi of being “preoccupied” with her family, a curious charge. To which she retorted, “It isn’t always women who have parenting responsibilities, men do too.” As I witnessed for myself with Mr Badenoch, the Half-Term Dad.
Strong families are crucial to a successful society, as Kemi Badenoch often points out. That belief is central to her political principles as it is to Conservatism. For instance, she is not afraid to voice the uncomfortable truth that fatherless boys can pose a major social problem. In fact, Kemi is not afraid full stop. It’s a rare politician who has the courage of their convictions (in an era when convictions themselves seem depressingly optional) and the 44-year-old Wimbledon-born engineer daughter of Nigerian parents is most definitely rare. She speaks her mind and the contents of that mind are always worth hearing. She isn’t scared of the Tory-loathing media, never courting their unwinnable approval but scornfully asking why she should care what is written in The Guardian, of all places!
Honestly, she makes you want to cheer. That’s why so many Conservatives have been waiting to vote for Kemi since Tory MPs failed to put her through in the 2022 leadership contest. It’s why she is the favourite to beat Robert Jenrick and be crowned her party’s new leader on Saturday.
I admit I have gone back and forth this past month, carefully weighing up the two candidates’ many merits. A Rob Badenoch or a Kemi Jenrick would have been just the ticket for wavering voters. Jenrick has run a superb campaign and we have watched him grow in stature. His argument that the Tories will never be in power again if they don’t have a firm plan to halt illegal migration (by leaving the ECHR) and drastically reduce legal immigration (which poses a threat to community cohesion) is bang on. His back story, as the bright, aspirational son of a mum and dad who started a small business on their kitchen table in Wolverhampton, is compelling, as is his instinctive patriotism and flat refusal to see the values and history of our nation disparaged. Had he been up against any other candidate, Rob would have got my vote, no question.
But the harsh fact is Conservatives are no longer just choosing a leader for themselves. Three months of blundering, spiteful, clueless and economically illiterate Labour government have shown us that we are now in an existential fight for the survival of our country. Although you will never hear it on the news, Starmer’s is a narrow, ideological regime of the far-Left: Marx and Spenders.
The argument for the Right (in both senses) has to be made by the most vivid and powerful personality possible. It’s hard for an opposition party to get coverage and cut through to the public. Kemi Badenoch will command attention, not just because of novelty value (although that will help) but because she is the one Labour fears most.
And so they should. Be afraid, be very afraid. A party that constantly lectures the rest of us on diversity, racism and misogyny has never managed to elect a woman leader, let alone a black woman leader. The prospect of the black Tory pot calling out the sanctimonious kettle is simply too delicious. PMQs on a Wednesday will be unmissable with Kemi Charisma up against Sir Keir who has all the animal magnetism of a stuffed owl. Badenoch is box office, and, to be blunt, the Tories need her to get bums back on seats.
A lot of mud has been thrown at the hot favourite during the campaign. There have been allegations that Badenoch is a loose cannon who blurts out tactless things, that she is the “puppet” of Tory grandees like Michael Gove and other tarnished Central Office Machiavells. It’s an accusation that produces an explosion of disbelieving laughter from one of her closest confidantes. “PUPPET? Kemi is the opposite of a puppet. She is totally her own woman. If anything, she needs to widen her circle, listen more and take different advice onboard.”
I understand that Badenoch has been under huge pressure to assign “jobs for the boys” – promising shadow cabinet titles to win over her critics and widen support – but she has steadfastly refused. This reluctance to play the game could be seen as political naivety – why not do it when all your rivals are? A close friend suggests that Kemi’s resistance to “coarse internal horse-trading” may be traced back to her upbringing in Nigeria where bribery and corruption were the dismaying norm.
Badenoch has spoken powerfully, if at times reluctantly, about a childhood which was often without running water or electricity and where explosions and gunfire in the neighbourhood were commonplace. Witnessing life in a frightening, failed state first hand has given her a deep and grateful appreciation of her birthplace with its rule of law, parliamentary democracy and frankly amateurish attempts at sleaze. It is not so terribly surprising, perhaps, that a woman who calls herself a “de facto immigrant” – 16-year-old Kemi arrived in the UK with £100 and worked in McDonald’s to put herself through sixth form and university – might turn out to be the most fiercely passionate defender of this much-maligned isle.
When she was Minister for Women and Equalities in the last government, she was accused of being “controversial” because she dared to tell her own children that Britain is “the best country in the world to be black”. (Ever the realist, Badenoch observed, “Being an ethnic minority irrespective of what country you’re in is challenging and that is just human nature. Even in countries where everybody is black, when you have ethnic minorities within them, as I saw within Nigeria, they often face very significant discrimination, more so than the sort of discrimination which I have seen myself in the UK.”) She is not claiming this country is perfect, she insists. “I’m saying that our country is better than others in handling differences. The message to many of those people who want to portray life in the UK as being so terrible is that if it was so, why is it that people keep coming here?” Quite.
Refusing to play along with the Lib-Leftist consensus that the UK is institutionally racist has seen Badenoch herself accused of “promoting racism” (bit of a stretch) even though, as a new MP in the Commons, it was she who was several times mistaken for a Labour MP because of her colour. She is frequently called a “highly divisive figure”, mainly by people in the Labour Party, public sector, Civil Service and their supine cheerleaders in the media. Most people agree with Kemi, I reckon, and share her view that recent Commonwealth demands for slavery reparations are a “fringe, unnecessary cause” given comfort by a Labour government “that is ashamed of its own country – giving away the Chagos Islands, watering down Britain’s influence at the UN and reducing our support for Israel in their fight against terror. If I am leader of the opposition I will ensure Keir Starmer is held to account for his deplorable actions,”she thundered.
I mean, who could resist someone who dismissed Foreign Secretary David Lammy as a “student politician who is BAD for Britain”. You tell’ em, lady!
One reason the Conservative government drifted away so disastrously from its natural supporters (losing millions to Reform UK) was because Tory MPs were intimidated by that Lib-Left consensus and became nervous about defending their traditional values (if, indeed, they still held them). In a recent encounter, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg took Badenoch to task for her “controversial” view that “not all cultures are equally valid”. Where most politicians would have squirmed and climbed down, Kemi glared and shot back: “Child marriage?” (Her return of serve is the best at Westminster.)
How could cultures which think it’s OK to force children to marry and which don’t believe in the equality of women be as valid as our own?, Badenoch demanded of a nonplussed Kuenssberg. The idea that such a morally self-evident view is now called “controversial” by our broadcasting elite shows what inroads the warped creed of woke has made into public discourse. Kemi, you can be sure, won’t stand for it.
Unlike the embarrassingly unimpressive Kamala Harris, Badenoch is the opposite of a “diversity hire”. It simply never occurs to people to suggest she got where she is on anything but merit. Indeed, such is the strength of her character, so steely her resolve, that she has the gift of making onlookers colour-blind. You are less likely to think of her as black than to applaud this formidable figure when she is using her forensic intelligence to take apart some dimwit.
If you are still in any doubt as to why Kemi Badenoch deserves your support, I suggest you Google her encounter at a select committee with Labour MP Kate Osborne over trans “hate crime” rates. Ms Osborne cited Badenoch’s use of the phrase “epidemic” in relation to the number of young people claiming they are trans (Kemi has rightly pointed out that many such teenagers are either gay or on the autistic spectrum) and then made the mistake of claiming that the minister was using “inflammatory language that likens children and young people coming out as trans to the spread of a disease”.
“I have never said that. That is a lie. You are LYING,” retorted Kemi with cold fury.
I can’t recall a moment like it, not since Mrs Thatcher stood at the despatch box, when moral certainty allied to sheer force of character eviscerated an opponent.
What else? “Kemi is such a scientific person,” her friend says. “She understands how things work.” Far better than a tool-maker’s son is a qualified engineer who will be able to lift up the bonnet of Britain and find out what’s wrong. Then take rigorous, practical steps to put it right. (“Unilateral economic disarmament” was her withering verdict on uncosted net zero targets.)
She is deeply blessed in her marriage to Hamish who helps his occasionally “tactless” wife “navigate the social minefield of British life”. Hamish wanted a Parliamentary career of his own but decided that one politician in the family was enough. “He is a big part of why she is what she is,” says the friend. “He’s also a great cook, which helps.”
If she wins on Saturday, as I hope she does, the best thing she could do is extend the hand of friendship to Robert Jenrick. What a dynamic duo they would make, taking the fight to this wretched Government.
Badenoch is a one-woman refutation of Labour’s belittling of Britain. “What many of those critics are trying to do is silence people like me,” she once said. “Because, as long as there are people like me out there showing what a success the UK is at hosting people from other countries, they are not going to be able to make profit from stoking division, so I make no apologies for that.”
You know, I hope Kemi doesn’t soften her edges, not much anyway. Tactless is too often a word the cowardly and complicit use for telling the truth. Trying to balance those lovely children with a job as big as this (even with the help of Half-Term Dad) will be a challenge, but we need her courage, we really do. And courage is Kemi Badenoch’s best quality.
Badenoch is clever, principled and afraid of no one. Her force of character will eviscerate Labour
I was walking the dog across our common on Monday morning – autumn is well and truly here when the leaves are the same colour as the cockapoo – when a young family came towards me. Three delightful children playing boisterously in the drizzle and vaguely meandering along behind a figure in padded jacket and cap who was striding ahead. He was a type I recognised immediately: Half-Term Dad.
While Mum is away working, Half-Term Dad picks up the childcare baton, knowing that this is the role he must fulfil as a loyal supportive partner, while also secretly wondering, “Dear God, how can it still only be 11am? That leaves another eight hours to keep the kids entertained before X gets home.”
Dads of his generation have come a long way and most are now brilliant at doing their share (often more than, actually), but who can blame them if they occasionally have the mien of a smoking dog in a laboratory; aware that such experiments must be conducted for the greater good of mankind while privately wishing they could be cosily in the office, safe from Pokemon and the 98th screening of Frozen, as their own fathers were.
For her part, the working mother will be busy doing her job but with a skein of guilt woven through her day; she will wonder how Half-Term Dad is getting on (“Don’t let them have your iPad!”) while knowing how much the kids would love it if she was there and they were all together as a family.
Those were my thoughts as Half-Term Dad and his cheery little platoon walked past me when, a few seconds later, the penny dropped. Wow. The children’s mother was at work alright, I twigged, but work of a rather special and demanding kind. Mummy was in the home straight of the race to become the leader of the oldest political party in the world and on track, God willing, to save the nation from the damp blight of Starmerite Socialism. Half-Term Dad was none other than Hamish Badenoch and that sweet trio, two girls and a boy, are Kemi’s.
Kemi Badenoch, who is the MP for my town of Saffron Walden, would not wish to be defined, let alone limited, by the fact that she’s a mother of three young children. Quite rightly, though, she wrestles, as all working mothers must, with the two most important roles in her life. She told Sky News this week that she has been thinking about what effect her aiming to become prime minister will have on the children because it’s “not a normal job”. That was refreshingly honest, which is strength not weakness in my book. Sir Christopher Chope recently accused Kemi of being “preoccupied” with her family, a curious charge. To which she retorted, “It isn’t always women who have parenting responsibilities, men do too.” As I witnessed for myself with Mr Badenoch, the Half-Term Dad.
Strong families are crucial to a successful society, as Kemi Badenoch often points out. That belief is central to her political principles as it is to Conservatism. For instance, she is not afraid to voice the uncomfortable truth that fatherless boys can pose a major social problem. In fact, Kemi is not afraid full stop. It’s a rare politician who has the courage of their convictions (in an era when convictions themselves seem depressingly optional) and the 44-year-old Wimbledon-born engineer daughter of Nigerian parents is most definitely rare. She speaks her mind and the contents of that mind are always worth hearing. She isn’t scared of the Tory-loathing media, never courting their unwinnable approval but scornfully asking why she should care what is written in The Guardian, of all places!
Honestly, she makes you want to cheer. That’s why so many Conservatives have been waiting to vote for Kemi since Tory MPs failed to put her through in the 2022 leadership contest. It’s why she is the favourite to beat Robert Jenrick and be crowned her party’s new leader on Saturday.
I admit I have gone back and forth this past month, carefully weighing up the two candidates’ many merits. A Rob Badenoch or a Kemi Jenrick would have been just the ticket for wavering voters. Jenrick has run a superb campaign and we have watched him grow in stature. His argument that the Tories will never be in power again if they don’t have a firm plan to halt illegal migration (by leaving the ECHR) and drastically reduce legal immigration (which poses a threat to community cohesion) is bang on. His back story, as the bright, aspirational son of a mum and dad who started a small business on their kitchen table in Wolverhampton, is compelling, as is his instinctive patriotism and flat refusal to see the values and history of our nation disparaged. Had he been up against any other candidate, Rob would have got my vote, no question.
But the harsh fact is Conservatives are no longer just choosing a leader for themselves. Three months of blundering, spiteful, clueless and economically illiterate Labour government have shown us that we are now in an existential fight for the survival of our country. Although you will never hear it on the news, Starmer’s is a narrow, ideological regime of the far-Left: Marx and Spenders.
The argument for the Right (in both senses) has to be made by the most vivid and powerful personality possible. It’s hard for an opposition party to get coverage and cut through to the public. Kemi Badenoch will command attention, not just because of novelty value (although that will help) but because she is the one Labour fears most.
And so they should. Be afraid, be very afraid. A party that constantly lectures the rest of us on diversity, racism and misogyny has never managed to elect a woman leader, let alone a black woman leader. The prospect of the black Tory pot calling out the sanctimonious kettle is simply too delicious. PMQs on a Wednesday will be unmissable with Kemi Charisma up against Sir Keir who has all the animal magnetism of a stuffed owl. Badenoch is box office, and, to be blunt, the Tories need her to get bums back on seats.
A lot of mud has been thrown at the hot favourite during the campaign. There have been allegations that Badenoch is a loose cannon who blurts out tactless things, that she is the “puppet” of Tory grandees like Michael Gove and other tarnished Central Office Machiavells. It’s an accusation that produces an explosion of disbelieving laughter from one of her closest confidantes. “PUPPET? Kemi is the opposite of a puppet. She is totally her own woman. If anything, she needs to widen her circle, listen more and take different advice onboard.”
I understand that Badenoch has been under huge pressure to assign “jobs for the boys” – promising shadow cabinet titles to win over her critics and widen support – but she has steadfastly refused. This reluctance to play the game could be seen as political naivety – why not do it when all your rivals are? A close friend suggests that Kemi’s resistance to “coarse internal horse-trading” may be traced back to her upbringing in Nigeria where bribery and corruption were the dismaying norm.
Badenoch has spoken powerfully, if at times reluctantly, about a childhood which was often without running water or electricity and where explosions and gunfire in the neighbourhood were commonplace. Witnessing life in a frightening, failed state first hand has given her a deep and grateful appreciation of her birthplace with its rule of law, parliamentary democracy and frankly amateurish attempts at sleaze. It is not so terribly surprising, perhaps, that a woman who calls herself a “de facto immigrant” – 16-year-old Kemi arrived in the UK with £100 and worked in McDonald’s to put herself through sixth form and university – might turn out to be the most fiercely passionate defender of this much-maligned isle.
When she was Minister for Women and Equalities in the last government, she was accused of being “controversial” because she dared to tell her own children that Britain is “the best country in the world to be black”. (Ever the realist, Badenoch observed, “Being an ethnic minority irrespective of what country you’re in is challenging and that is just human nature. Even in countries where everybody is black, when you have ethnic minorities within them, as I saw within Nigeria, they often face very significant discrimination, more so than the sort of discrimination which I have seen myself in the UK.”) She is not claiming this country is perfect, she insists. “I’m saying that our country is better than others in handling differences. The message to many of those people who want to portray life in the UK as being so terrible is that if it was so, why is it that people keep coming here?” Quite.
Refusing to play along with the Lib-Leftist consensus that the UK is institutionally racist has seen Badenoch herself accused of “promoting racism” (bit of a stretch) even though, as a new MP in the Commons, it was she who was several times mistaken for a Labour MP because of her colour. She is frequently called a “highly divisive figure”, mainly by people in the Labour Party, public sector, Civil Service and their supine cheerleaders in the media. Most people agree with Kemi, I reckon, and share her view that recent Commonwealth demands for slavery reparations are a “fringe, unnecessary cause” given comfort by a Labour government “that is ashamed of its own country – giving away the Chagos Islands, watering down Britain’s influence at the UN and reducing our support for Israel in their fight against terror. If I am leader of the opposition I will ensure Keir Starmer is held to account for his deplorable actions,”she thundered.
I mean, who could resist someone who dismissed Foreign Secretary David Lammy as a “student politician who is BAD for Britain”. You tell’ em, lady!
One reason the Conservative government drifted away so disastrously from its natural supporters (losing millions to Reform UK) was because Tory MPs were intimidated by that Lib-Left consensus and became nervous about defending their traditional values (if, indeed, they still held them). In a recent encounter, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg took Badenoch to task for her “controversial” view that “not all cultures are equally valid”. Where most politicians would have squirmed and climbed down, Kemi glared and shot back: “Child marriage?” (Her return of serve is the best at Westminster.)
How could cultures which think it’s OK to force children to marry and which don’t believe in the equality of women be as valid as our own?, Badenoch demanded of a nonplussed Kuenssberg. The idea that such a morally self-evident view is now called “controversial” by our broadcasting elite shows what inroads the warped creed of woke has made into public discourse. Kemi, you can be sure, won’t stand for it.
Unlike the embarrassingly unimpressive Kamala Harris, Badenoch is the opposite of a “diversity hire”. It simply never occurs to people to suggest she got where she is on anything but merit. Indeed, such is the strength of her character, so steely her resolve, that she has the gift of making onlookers colour-blind. You are less likely to think of her as black than to applaud this formidable figure when she is using her forensic intelligence to take apart some dimwit.
If you are still in any doubt as to why Kemi Badenoch deserves your support, I suggest you Google her encounter at a select committee with Labour MP Kate Osborne over trans “hate crime” rates. Ms Osborne cited Badenoch’s use of the phrase “epidemic” in relation to the number of young people claiming they are trans (Kemi has rightly pointed out that many such teenagers are either gay or on the autistic spectrum) and then made the mistake of claiming that the minister was using “inflammatory language that likens children and young people coming out as trans to the spread of a disease”.
“I have never said that. That is a lie. You are LYING,” retorted Kemi with cold fury.
I can’t recall a moment like it, not since Mrs Thatcher stood at the despatch box, when moral certainty allied to sheer force of character eviscerated an opponent.
What else? “Kemi is such a scientific person,” her friend says. “She understands how things work.” Far better than a tool-maker’s son is a qualified engineer who will be able to lift up the bonnet of Britain and find out what’s wrong. Then take rigorous, practical steps to put it right. (“Unilateral economic disarmament” was her withering verdict on uncosted net zero targets.)
She is deeply blessed in her marriage to Hamish who helps his occasionally “tactless” wife “navigate the social minefield of British life”. Hamish wanted a Parliamentary career of his own but decided that one politician in the family was enough. “He is a big part of why she is what she is,” says the friend. “He’s also a great cook, which helps.”
If she wins on Saturday, as I hope she does, the best thing she could do is extend the hand of friendship to Robert Jenrick. What a dynamic duo they would make, taking the fight to this wretched Government.
Badenoch is a one-woman refutation of Labour’s belittling of Britain. “What many of those critics are trying to do is silence people like me,” she once said. “Because, as long as there are people like me out there showing what a success the UK is at hosting people from other countries, they are not going to be able to make profit from stoking division, so I make no apologies for that.”
You know, I hope Kemi doesn’t soften her edges, not much anyway. Tactless is too often a word the cowardly and complicit use for telling the truth. Trying to balance those lovely children with a job as big as this (even with the help of Half-Term Dad) will be a challenge, but we need her courage, we really do. And courage is Kemi Badenoch’s best quality.