Good news for Badenoch - Nadine Dorries is predicting her demise

Kemi Badenoch is having a miserable time as Conservative leader. Overtaken by Reform in the polls, overshadowed in the media and out of her depth at prime minister’s questions, there are already rumblings about ousting her, with MPs briefing hard about her performance.

So she’ll be glad of an intervention by British politics’ worst tipster – Nadine ‘Mystic Nads’ Dorries! The former culture secretary has taken to X to predict that “Kemi Badenoch will not be leader by the time we are packing our factor 50 and heading to the beach this summer. She will be long gone”.

Badenoch should be delighted, as Mystic Nads’ predictions have tended to be as accurate as Michael Fish circa October 1987. Back in June of last year, during the general election campaign, Dorries made the curious claim that Rishi Sunak was about to resign and be replaced by David Cameron, making him the first prime minister to rule from the Lords since the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury in 1903. “I have always said that Cameron was popped into the Lords and into a senior ministerial post for a reason,” she mused. “Rumours around tonight that Sunak’s about to fall on his sword.”

In early June 2022, Dorries insisted that Boris Johnson was safe at No.10 despite growing disquiet about his Partygate lies and other matters. “Look, 180 MPs are what would be needed to secure a vote of no confidence in the prime minister. That is never going to happen,” she said, insisting Johnson would survive. Six weeks later, scores of ministerial resignations meant he was toast.

Now she’s confident Badenoch is on her way out, and even knows who “the movement fixers” – aka Dr No, the shadowy Tory insider who decides who leads the party when not nailing rabbits to doors in her two batshit books about the party – want in.

They are “Alex Burghart and Claire Coutinho,” she says. “It’s just a game to these guys. Power and politics, it’s like a drug, they are addicted.”

It seems unlikely. Burghart is shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, barely a household name in his own household and embarrassed himself deputising for Badenoch at prime minister’s questions last year. Coutinho, on the other hand, might not exactly welcome the leadership, what with currently being on maternity leave.

Another triumph for Mystic Nads!