I've recently made complimentary remarks about Kemi Badenoch on this thread. She's putting a bit of grit back into the Conservative party, and indeed eating into support for the turquoise terror.
However she's just badly blotted her copybook. Andy Burnham has – bravely and rightly – addressed the issue of the triple lock on pensions, which every economist worthy of the name regards as catastrophically unsustainable.
Here was a chance for a bit of non-divisive politics. Burnham eased the door open. She should have followed.
That she did not is, I'm afraid, purely cynical courting of grey voters.
She's done pretty well with the lousy hand she inherited, but I'm afraid she's full of shit. The latest populist bollocks was the claim that they'd slash foreign aid to build more prisons. A complete lie. The Tories showed not the slightest interest in doing either in fourteen years of arrogant, incompetent complacency.
I do hope that the guff I've read of her transforming the country in the manner of Mrs Thatcher was just the media, and not her. Senator, you're no Margaret Thatcher.
It is exactly as you say - most Tory support comes from boomers, who are now pensioners or approaching pension age, so she's got to appeal to them.
Oh dear. Kemi has now further blotted her copybook. The main headline on the front page of today’s
Times is, “Badenoch to pledge bonfire of green laws”.
I can’t go along with a rabidly “anti-environmental” agenda. In addition, bonfires release CO₂ into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change.
This follows Kemi’s shameful determination to keep the triple lock. So I’m afraid that it’s “two strikes and she’s out” – I’ve kicked Kemi out of the list of party leaders who may get my vote in the next election.
I wouldn’t, however, kick Kemi out of bed, because I have a feeling that she would be energetic and creative. In the middle ages a gap between the teeth – a gat-tooth – was thought to indicate a bold, adventurous and sensual nature. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath was gat-toothed, and she was famously lusty. She’d been married five times, and had many affairs before that. Kemi’s only been married once, but I bet she’s a tiger in bed.
Anyway. It might be supposed that, since, like everyone else, I have only one vote, Kemi won’t be much dismayed when she reads this on one of her regular visits to UKP.
Au contraire. As an “influencer” – I won’t say how many followers I’ve got, but it’s, erm, quite a lot – I have the ability to move metaphorical mountains. And Kemi knows that.
