Kenneth Fishlock

At long last, someone in Westminster appears to have located both a spine and a functioning grasp of reality. While Sir Keir Starmer wanders about Downing Street like an apologetic stock-room boy accidentally promoted beyond his capabilities, Kemi Badenoch has emerged with the rarest of modern political qualities: clarity. No gimmicks. No focus-grouped drivel. No dreary sermon wrapped in buzz-word jargon. Just sharp intellect, conviction and the increasingly radical notion that Britain ought to govern itself properly. Her description of Starmer as “in office but not in power” was not merely a political jab. It was a devastatingly accurate diagnosis. The man occupies Number 10 in much the same way a substitute teacher occupies a classroom: technically in charge, yet entirely ignored by the people around him. After 14 years in opposition, Labour finally clawed its way into government only to discover it had spent so long protesting outside the building that it forgot to prepare for what happens inside it. The result is a government lurching from U-turn to U-turn with all the dignity of a sexually inappropriate drunk uncle attempting the foxtrot at a wedding reception. No new taxes? Reversed. Tough on immigration? Reversed. Fiscal discipline? Reversed before the ink had dried. One almost expects Labour ministers to begin each morning by spinning a wheel marked “today’s abandoned principle”. Meanwhile nearly 100 Labour MPs are openly sharpening the knives, ministers are resigning with the frequency of Premier League coaches and Starmer himself delivers speeches with the haunted expression of a man slowly realising the lifeboat has already left shore. And into this shambles walks Kemi Badenoch: articulate, composed and gloriously unafraid to say what millions of ordinary Britons have been muttering into their tea for years. Her agenda, whether on border security, energy independence or national defence, at least resembles a government that understands a country cannot survive indefinitely on slogans, diversity seminars and taxpayer-funded feelings. Britain requires competence. It requires order. It requires leadership that does not treat patriotism as faintly embarrassing. What makes Badenoch so refreshing is not merely that she dismantles Labour with forensic precision, though she does that beautifully, it is that she speaks with the sort of unapologetic confidence Britain once admired before Westminster became infested with careerists who communicate exclusively in HR-approved mush. There is something wonderfully English about her approach. Sensible. Direct. Unsentimental. The political equivalent of a brisk walk through cold weather whilst someone incompetent is firmly told to pull themselves together. And perhaps that is why Labour fears her so deeply. Because beneath the media pearl-clutching and endless manufactured outrage, Badenoch represents something profoundly dangerous to the modern political establishment: a politician who appears to actually mean what she says. In today’s Westminster, that borders on revolutionary. Starmer may still possess the keys to Number 10, but increasingly he resembles a temporary tenant awaiting eviction whilst Kemi Badenoch stands outside with the auction catalogue and a perfectly raised eyebrow.

Andy Burnham is a full-blown gender ideologue. As Mayor of Manchester, he oversaw £100,000 of funding for an organisation helping children to get puberty blockers. He also criticised the Supreme Court judgment on biological sex. Labour cannot be trusted on child safeguarding.