Kemi Badenoch has one big advantage in this leadership campaign against Robert Jenrick — being better known amongst the membership. She has had years in high profile cabinet positions to build a media profile amongst the party faithful — as a “proper right-winger” who isn’t afraid of a fight, and takes no “BS”.

This perception has begun to fray over the course of the campaign as Badenoch has made repeated gaffes and then blamed the media for reporting them accurately, notably in the case of maternity pay. Moreover, greater scrutiny is beginning to build, mostly online, towards her previous comments as an MP. In 2018, Badenoch declared to the House of Commons that she had lobbied the Government to increase legal immigration.

This is a fact she would rather not address in the middle of a leadership campaign in which she is presenting herself as a “candidate of the right”, and so it makes tactical sense to avoid scrutiny from journalists and the public as much as possible.

Her campaign team … have stopped her from appearing on the media since her disastrous conference

Whilst Jenrick has made a clear pledge on immigration caps and the ECHR, Badenoch has consistently avoided committing to any precise details on how she would resolve the most pressing issue in British politics — the one that cost the Conservatives the last election and allowed the rise of the Reform Party. Instead, she prefers to make vague promises to think about it very carefully whilst in opposition. 

The hope of her campaign team is that they can carry this “ming vase” into the election. To that effect, they have stopped her from appearing on the media since her disastrous conference, sending Helen Whateley and Kevin Hollinrake to do her media rounds in her stead. She has also avoided going on to Laura Kuenssberg. Her latest wheeze, allegedly, was to get a head to head debate contest with Harry Cole of the Sun cancelled on the grounds that he is too aggressive of an interviewer. (Her team denies this.)

The BBC has offered to fill the space — an opportunity that Jenrick wishes to seize, but one that Badenoch is obstructing by claiming it is up to CCHQ to make the decision for her. The tactical rationale is, again, obvious. Jenrick could easily pull her promises on immigration apart in front of a live TV audience. But this bodes very poorly for Badenoch’s ability to lead a party in opposition. You will not be able to beat Keir Starmer’s Labour Party by hiding from scrutiny. You have to be willing to take every opportunity to raise your profile and put your ideas across. You cannot hide behind your supporters. 

Badenoch’s other excuse for avoiding scrutiny has been that she has had to spend time with her family, as she did on Sunday. She has posited that it is unreasonable to expect politicians to compromise their family life in order to pursue their career. Is that the sort of work ethic that members want from their leader? When you need to rescue yourself from a historic defeat, you need to be willing to put the work in without excuses. That she is being compared by her supporters to Margaret Thatcher, a woman who famously survived on four hours of sleep a night, is beyond risible.

Badenoch has even resorted to asserting that she would be a better leader of the opposition because she is from an ethnic minority, apparently untroubled by the obvious moral hypocrisy of claiming to oppose identity politics whilst relying on it to gain political capital. Margaret Thatcher — who, again, Badenoch and her ilk tirelessly cite as an inspiration — would never have attempted to use her womanhood to win political favour. Apart from it being astonishingly undignified, it is not an effective political strategy. You only have to have the mental capacity to remember who Priti Patel, or even Suella Braverman, is to know that this is not the case. “The Left” don’t have a problem being nasty to ethnic minority Tories, and commentators who suggest otherwise are showing themselves to have the memory span of goldfish.

Preventing an honest and open debate during the leadership campaign does not prevent scrutiny, it merely delays it

The great mistake of this leadership campaign was the decision by party bosses to introduce a yellow card system for “blue on blue” attacks between candidates. This has seriously undermined the ability of the Conservative Party membership to make an informed decision between Jenrick and Badenoch. This has been compounded by the fact that Badenoch has used every trick in the book to avoid a head to head debate. The fact that Badenoch has lobbied for higher immigration should be known to the party rank and file. In fact, sources tell me she privately told Rishi that the whole issue was simply one of “party management” and had little interest in the details.

Preventing an honest and open debate during the leadership campaign does not prevent scrutiny, it merely delays it. By the time the next General Election comes around, the Labour Party media team will have no compunction in tearing apart the records of the Conservative Party leader, whoever that may be. Sunlight is always the best disinfectant, and it’s better to apply it before the leader is picked, instead of waiting for them to be defeated.