Kemi Badenoch opened her press conference on Tuesday with a revealing complaint. Labour, she said, were blaming Conservatives for the state of the country “long after they left office”. It was noteworthy because, a few minutes later, the Tory leader said that “many of the problems we have now are because we did not unwind a lot of Labour’s mistakes in 2010.”
Some would look at the claim that 16 months is a long time and 15 years but the blink of an eye and call it inconsistency. That’s quite unfair. It’s not widely known that, as well as being an engineer, Badenoch is the greatest physicist of her generation, someone who gives her speeches from a fold in the space-time continuum known as the Quantum Realm.
A lot of people will explain to you that in the Quantum Realm, light is both a particle and a wave. More than that, you can measure either the cost of a policy or its impact, but never both. This is known as Mel Stride’s Uncertainty Principle, after the Shadow Chancellor, who had joined his leader, to announce he’d found billions that could be saved from the welfare bill. By a tragic coincidence, Stride has located these only now that he is in opposition. Perhaps the Quantum Realm can provide him with a route to communicate them back through time to the man who actually oversaw the welfare budget from 2022 to 2024, Mel Stride.
Or perhaps not. Someone asked about the actual tax position of the government of which she was a part. “I don’t have the time machine to go back and fix what other people did,” Badenoch replied. Hadn’t she been one of those “other people”? Moments earlier she’d been talking about her Cabinet experience. The answer of course is that she’d been both there and not there. Anything is possible in the Quantum Realm.
Farage occupies a space where he is simultaneously the next prime minister and the victim of a huge conspiracy
“Government is difficult,” she went on, returning to a familiar theme. “This is what we learned.” She says this a lot, without ever explaining when exactly the party learned it, or who had told them it was easy.
Reform, Badenoch complained, “wait for us to announce things and then copy us”. How does she square this with her claim that Nigel Farage is really a left-winger? In the Quantum Realm, someone can be on both the left and the right, and you have to open the box to find out if an announcement involves a dead cat.
What of the rival party’s plan to take away the entitlements of European Union citizens living in the UK? “It’s a bad idea,” Badenoch said. “We spent a lot of time negotiating those rights. You start unpicking that, and you would start unpicking all of the work that was done year after year after year with a lot of pain and effort during those years when we were negotiating Brexit.” Even Conservatives now describe Britain’s departure from the EU in tones of horror.
Asked, in the light of Shabana Mahmood’s statement the previous day, whether she too had experienced racist abuse, Badenoch denounced the Guardian’s sketchwriter for an “astonishing piece” about Mahmood that morning that was “absolutely disgusting”. My colleague can speak for himself, but it is interesting that Badenoch can detect faint signs of racism in distant newspapers, but not notice it when, for instance, her Shadow Justice Secretary complains about all the brown faces in Birmingham. Perhaps her visits to the Quantum Realm have left her long-sighted.
Elsewhere, at that precise moment, Farage was holding his own press conference, to announce that there need be no tax rises at all, if we just make foreigners pay for everything. Events with the Reform leader take place in their own part of the Quantum Realm, a space where Farage is at once triumphant and put upon, simultaneously the next prime minister and the victim of a huge conspiracy.
Someone asked about the exciting rollercoaster ride of discovering reality that Reform-led councils have been on since taking office. Having promised to cut wasteful spending, they’ve since realised they’re going to have to raise taxes. This, to Farage, was proof that everyone is out to get him. No one had reported on local government before this year, he complained. “Now of course there’s a huge focus on county councils.” Reform is sceptical about renewable energy, but it often seems to be run entirely on whinge power.
Nothing is ever good enough for Farage. Camilla Tominey, who like him hosts a GB News show, asked whether Yusuf was now the party’s choice for Chancellor of the Exchequer. This was hardly a hostile question, but that didn’t save her from an angry reply. “No wonder you’re so well-paid,” he snapped, offering an insight into tensions between stars at a TV channel whose sole purpose, lest we forget, is to boost Farage. “But I’m not playing your silly little game.” Only total fawning is acceptable to the Great Nigel.
How, he was asked repeatedly, would he be able to renege on the Brexit deal without the EU retaliating? “It’s a negotiation,” Farage replied confidently. “They’re still selling us lots of cars, you know! We’re still buying 20 million bottles of champagne!” Cars and champagne as a bargaining chip! Had we tumbled back to 2016? Any minute now someone we going to announce that we held all the cards. Anything is possible in the Quantum Realm.
