Will Kemi Badenoch split the Tory party? | UK politics | The New Statesman

With James Cleverly out, Kemi Badenoch is favourite to succeed Rishi Sunak. But the Conservatives are more divided than ever.

Andrew Marr joins Hannah Barnes and Rachel Cunliffe to answer listener questions.

In this episode, a listener asks whether a Kemi Badenoch leadership would cause the Conservative party to split in two.

📚 READ
The Tory leadership debate: Jenrick fails to catch Badenoch

🙋‍♀️ ASK a question

📧 FREE get our daily politics email

💷 SAVE Become a New Statesman subscriber:

🎧 LISTEN to the New Statesman podcast

--
Andrew Marr is Political Editor for the New Statesman, and is one of the UK's most senior political journalists. He spent over 20 years at the BBC where he was Political Editor and hosted the wildly successful Andrew Marr show. He is now based in Westminster where he brings his deep experience of political reporting to his analysis of the most important events in UK politics. He also hosts Tonight with Andrew Marr on LBC Radio.

--
The New Statesman brings you unrivalled analysis of of the latest UK and international politics. On our YouTube channel you’ll find insight on the top news and global current affairs stories, as well as insightful interviews with politicians, advisers and leading political thinkers, to help you understand the political and economic forces shaping the world.

With regular contributions from our writers including Political Editor Andrew Marr, Hannah Barnes, Rachel Cunliffe and George Eaton we’ll help you understand the world of politics and global affairs from Westminster to Washington and beyond.

#topnews #news #politics

[travismcqueen]

When is Andrew going to do his weekend monologues again. They are missed.

[lafreeman]

She'll do more than split the party. She'll destroy it entirely. Long live Kemi

[w.t.chapman]

Who will be the winner between these two? Answer- Labour

[peterjermey]

Boris already expelled the decent tories. There's nobody left on parliament who would be horrified by Kemi

[mattliamjack]

How many normal people roll their eyes and turn over when she's on screen????🙄💩🚽🤡

[cassandra]

In this climate, that is a very irresponsible "joke". Lets not sanitise Kemi. Her and her ilk have extremely grim plans for the UK.

[hansfromcongo]

Good to see the comments are derranged as per usual.

[FranzBieberkopf]

As well as being a hard-core right wing headbanger, Bad Enoch is remarkably thin-skinned.
She'd last five minutes at PMQs, Starmer would chew her to bits.
If she wins, i predict another Tory leadership within 2 years.

[Doc_Filth]

I think Andrew makes a valid point at the end: government of *whatever* party or leaning needs a decent opposition to keep it in check, and as long as the Tories are trying to buddy up to Reform, fight a culture war that only extremists on Twitter even care about, or do whatever else they can to alienate centre-right voters, Starmer's shittier tendencies are going to go completely unchecked.

[MichaelJones-byng]

Kemi Badenoch became working class when she started working in McDonald’s

[jamessmith]

The blur on that front cover does my head in.

[andrewhuckle]

Kemi Badenoch will probably win the Tory leadership. Very popular with party members. But for a politician she's very touchy when criticized. She always feels the need to answer back, when sometimes in politics it's best to ignore something said. Apparently she has been rude to a certain number of Tory MPs in the past, so if she doesn't cut the mustard as leader and make a positive breakthrough for the Tories in a year or so I can see backbench MPs sharpening the knives against her.

[michaels]

That’s why she hates journalism people like Andrew deciding which jokes are jokes and which are not, just ask her, don’t second guess her, which is what journalists just love doing.

[peterdollins]

It was not a joke Miss Clueless. 'When people tell you who they are, believe them.'

[dianamincher]

But what can Kemi do for the Conservative membership? Her uncommitted take is small state and Conservatives are materially and in terms of power the winners as opposed to the rest of the 68 million population! Kemi has stuffy old stagnant ideas that she keeps on repackaging to kid the Conservative membership! She's fairly deceptive and she does a lot of covering up!

[gailhill]

Luckily for ordinary people neither tory candidate has a chance of winning over centrist (left or right) voters with their divisive rhetoric

[geoffnewman]

The parallels between Badenoch and Trump are fascinating.

[RogerHyam]

Wonderful discussion of two candidates one of whom is a black woman and the other a white man with out mentioning either gender or race! As many Tory party members are still pretty much like the Major off Faulty Towers I would imagine both genera and race have a big part to play.

[CodestarProductions]

The lighting's looking more flattering, good job videographer

[MKhosla-wbbf]

No Kemi will not divide tories but consolidate them - they reform and new thinking