The reason ‘Queen of Mean’ Kemi Badenoch wants people to dislike her

Become an Independent member to bookmark this article Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Membership today. Join today Already a member? Log in I n the wake of Andy Burnham firing the starting gun for the next election campaign at Labour’s party conference in Liverpool, Kemi Badenoch is still seeking her “authentically me” moment. The Conservative leader finds herself teeing up her own centre stage moment as modest numbers of Tories head to Birmingham. In truth, she finds herself struggling to seize the limelight. Burnham’s speech was all about wearing his great big bruised British heart on his heart – blaming all things to the right as the source or Britain’s woes in a thumping, left-populist speech. Nigel Farage , Badenoch’s enemy to her right, soaks up much of the free-floating angry vote, who blame the pre-2024 Tory governments for putting the liberalism in neo-liberalism. So how does the Conservative leader avoid getting trapped in the lift doors in between? Badenoch’s answer is to lean into the side of her personality often criticised – that she does not court likeability. She will frame it as a foil to the people-pleasing tendencies of the new PM. In an interview on friendly territory with The Spectator this week, Badenoch let fly at Labour and most of Reform – and kicked a few former Conservative shins in a drive-by too. Burnham? “Saying yes to everyone is a recipe for disaster.” Sir Keir Starmer? “Not interesting.” At conference, Badenoch will seek to differentiate her party from Burnham’s by highlighting why faster and tougher welfare reform is not only necessary, but also requires action that goes further and faster than Labour has dared. That territory has indeed been left tantalising open. Even some of Labour’s internal reformers are getting antsy about the long march to reducing a ballooning sickness benefit bill, especially for the young. Any mention of this was squeezed out of the Burnham’s bravura speech. Instead, the PM wanted to focus on the “grand bargain” of downgrading the pensions “triple lock” to create a saving of around £9bn to put towards a new social care system. Concrete steps won’t follow till after the budget later this month. Recommended Andy Burnham’s decision to keep the right to jury trials is welcome I never thought I would say it, but Kemi Badenoch really could become prime minister Burnham faces a stark choice: Call an election or be a lame duck In truth, the Tories are still figuring out precisely how to oppose the big triple lock overhaul . Labour’s sums don’t add up – and Burnham’s plan will cost around double the amount he plans to save. But it does buy him some fiscal space to promise a reform which would otherwise bust his party’s spending rules. And Tories should be cautious of defending only the interests of the retired when their biggest electoral challenge is a dearth of policies which could tempt young people in their first tax-paying years to support them. But the personal distinction Badenoch seeks to draw with Burnham is not a spreadsheet argument, but one of temperament. Asked if the prospect of needy young people ending up on “subsistence” benefits would take her back to being the “nasty party”, Kemi was well up for the “Queen of Mean” role. “Quite frankly, pandering to these people and trying to make them like us. Did it work? No, it didn’t.” It’s the sharpest line she has drawn with predecessors – including Theresa May – who warned in 2022 that the Tory’s “nasty party” tag showed that the party needed to shed its Dickensian caricature, saying: “Our base is too narrow and so, occasionally, are our sympathies.” David Cameron too wanted to water down dislike for the party by adding the dash of urban glitz and green policies. Badenoch, by contrast, is backing fast away from net zero. The instinctive response to all this will be that she is making herself seem unattractive and overly pugnacious (which can happen, as many who have worked with her can attest). But she may also be right on one crucial point: much time is wasted in politics trying to make yourself appealing to people who will never warm to you. Being “more aggressive”, as she puts it, may also be a risk worth taking for a party that needs to show it can chip away at the appeal Reform exerts. In Liverpool, Burnham set a trap for his opponents, presenting a wildly nostalgic recipe for reasserting “control” and state oversight as a national morality tale, framing any other approaches as cruel or counter-productive. But that does not answer the “now” questions left floating in the jetsam of the Mersey this week, as an ebullient Labour party enjoyed a messianic week. How is the welfare bill to come down to pay for welfare? Or, indeed, cross-subsidise innovations like the National Care Plan? Where does the kind-heartedness piled on in Liverpool leave the difficult task of government saying “no” – beyond spinning proposed changes so far into the future that returns and trade-offs become fantastical? After the debacle and retreat after a backbench in the Commons last year, Badenoch believes she has found the turf on which she proves herself a hardline reformer with a firmer economic underpinning than the free-wheeling economic fireworks of Reform and less burdened by dubious associations and funding rows. The unspoken avatar in all this is Margaret Thatcher – still an icon of vast dislike on the left, but the post-war period’s most impactful leader. If Labour wants to back to the 1980s, Badenoch is figuring that she can find her footing in that legacy too – and hope that being nice is not all it’s cracked up to be. Anne McElvoy is co-host of Politics at Sam and Anne’s podcast and executive editor at POLITICO