‘He's lost control… again’ Part 1: Rishi Sunak’s Badenoch conundrum
We should spare a thought for Kemi Badenoch.
The Conservative leadership hopeful had a disastrous last week and as a result of her actions and behaviour, her political career is looking rather precarious.
Comparisons had been drawn between Badenoch's actions last week and the Streisand effect where an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information has the unintended consequence of publicising, spreading, or increasing awareness of that information.
While Badenoch's recent potential breaches of the ministerial code bear some characteristics of the Streisand effect, they don't necessarily stem from concealment or censorship. Instead, her actions have merely highlighted claims that might have been forgotten by the public had she responded with indifference or some typical boring political denial.
Badenoch chose the opposite approach and characteristically made a lot of noise. It’s quite possible that as a result of the noise, she has made life considerably worse for herself.
A few weeks ago, I partly profiled Kemi Badenoch in light of Rishi Sunak's joke aimed at the transgender community.
The joke nobody wanted, least of all as told by you, Prime Minister
Another bleak chapter in the narrative of contemporary British politics unfolded this week at Prime Minister’s Questions as Rishi Sunak made a crass and callous joke at the expense of the transgender community. Adding to Sunak's problem, however, was the presence of Esther Ghey in the gallery in the same session. Esther is the mother of Brianna Ghey, a …
Badenoch became the focus of the article due to her significant role, in my view, exacerbating the debate surrounding gender, equality, and self-identity. I made the point, actually, that among Sunak’s ministers, none appear as culpable as Kemi Badenoch in weaponising this discourse.
“[Badenoch’s] views on matters…”, I noted, are often stated without much care or consideration; Badenoch is brash, she is brutish, brittle, and she is often extremely “abrasive… perhaps detrimentally so.”
Often when questioned on matters, when penned into a debate, and when faced with any degree of scrutiny or criticism, Badenoch isn’t the kind of individual to offer a light riposte. She is remarkably thin skinned and combative for somebody who Conservatives admire for her apparent grasp of the brief.