Badenoch the opportunist tiptoes towards disaster

For her, it’s this: Kemi Badenoch’s actions on calling for a “grooming gangs” inquiry look good if you’re paying barely any attention to them, and appear progressively worse as you learn more details.

The issues start with Badenoch’s supposed amendment calling for an inquiry in parliament, which was attached to the second reading of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. In reality, this was a “reasoned amendment”, a form of parliamentary procedure that explains why those voting cannot support a bill.

If a “reasoned amendment” passes, the legislation it is attached to fails – meaning nothing changes versus the status quo. Conservative MPs had always planned to vote against the Labour bill, which unravels several of their education reforms, but simply added a sentence to their amendment saying they wanted the government to hold an inquiry.

Badenoch’s strategy, in other words, relies on voters not actually paying attention or learning the details. That might work sometimes, but those who do learn about the details tend to feel distinctly cheated once they do, in a way that takes a long time to heal.

Labour, not being above a little cynicism themselves, flagged that their Bill itself included some child safeguarding measures. So on a vote that was mostly about education, Labour said the Conservatives voted against child safety, while the Tories claimed the reverse. All very edifying.

Badenoch went further though, happily politicising an issue that other leaders might first pause about and think deserves a bit more seriousness or dignity. The Conservatives had sent around an email including a fundraising link on the topic by Wednesday, but after the vote they designed hundreds of customised Facebook graphics with pictures of Labour MPs next to copy saying “Do you think there should be an inquiry into rape gangs? [Name of MP] doesn’t.”

By Thursday – the same day Facebook changed its rules to say that calling people “trannies”, saying gay people are mentally ill, or that some races are stupider than others was all okay – the Conservative Party was paying to boost those posts as Facebook adverts. All of them link through to a website harvesting email addresses to add people to Conservative mailing lists.

So far, some people might find themselves admiring the amoral ruthlessness of the Kemi Badenoch operation, but it is reliant on finding people that care enough about the issue of the rape gangs inquiry to click Conservative adverts, but not enough to do any further research.

When questioned by the lobby, Badenoch’s spokesman admitted that she had not spoken to any survivors of the rape gangs, and had no plan to do so in the near future – meaning she cannot claim to have changed her mind on the issue owing to anything other than opportunism in the wake of Elon Musk’s tirades on the topic.

Additionally, Badenoch was the minister for women and equalities from October 2022 to July 2024 – meaning that the issue of an inquiry was directly in her ministerial brief until just a few months ago. Badenoch is essentially demanding the government does something she personally had responsibility for until a few months ago.

She has, in short, gone all out campaigning for something she clearly didn’t care about until she thought there might be votes in it. Perhaps she will get away with it on this occasion, but this is the kind of risk taking that eventually blows up in politicians’ faces and torpedoes their careers.

Badenoch has essentially skipped halfway across a minefield, and thinks because nothing bad has happened so far, it must have been a good idea. If she stays on this course, and she seems incapable of seeking any other, it will not take many more steps before one ends in disaster.