The Guardian’s Pippa Crerar published a story recently about Tory leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch, with quotes from officials in the Department for Business and Trade accusing her of creating a toxic environment whilst she was the Secretary of State there. But in the article was a curious line: 

A spokesperson for Badenoch…confirmed that the business secretary “had to let go of” some senior officials

Unless they’re going to play word games, she has lied

Kemi followed up this with a tweet in which she claimed the allegations were “smears from former staff who I sacked after they were accused of bullying behaviour”. As Westminster watchers will know, Ministers can’t sack civil servants. Could she have meant Special Advisors? But in the quote provided to the Guardian, the term “senior officials” is used, which is never used to mean Spads. When I asked a spokesman for Badenoch, I was told that the “real question” was “why has the Guardian run an anonymous testimony that is contradicted by the department’s statement, and by an official happy to be named who worked with Kemi in the department?”. (If journalists refrained from this, they might as well quit. It would rule out most journalism). But when I politely asked for my actual question to be answered, I was ignored.

Perhaps the department could help? The Press Office at Business and Trade was unwilling to answer anything on the phone, (why do they have a number?) and I was told to ask Kemi’s team for clarification. So far, so unhelpful.

What’s clear is that Kemi could not have sacked any civil servants. So unless they’re going to play games, and suggest “senior officials” actually means Spads (although it’s quite hard to understand who these sacked Spads could be), she has lied. And in her own name, not via her press team.

Perhaps she had told the staff who had displeased her that she would no longer work with them, and although she couldn’t touch their employment status, she would now be leaving them out of meetings and decisions, in the hope that they’d leave by themselves. If this was the case, I’d be the last person to criticise this tactic as in the absence of changing the law (although the Tories had 14 years to change the law) this is the only lever she could have pulled.

However, if Team Badenoch had released something to that effect as a statement, perhaps it would have (in Guardian readers’ minds at least) not exactly contradicted the idea that she was bullying civil servants? But why should that have bothered the fearless Kemi — the sacker-of civil-servants?

Badenoch is applying for a job — a big one — and part of her pitch to be Tory leader is her explicitly saying she has “sacked” people. There is, as yet, no evidence that this claim is true. 

That’s not the best sign.