When Kemi Badenoch became Conservative Party leader to say that I was unimpressed with her early performance would be somewhat of an understatement. I was impressed by her when she was part of the last Tory government because she seemed to be one of the few people in the Tories who were willing to take aim at the DEI shitshow that all the main parties, including the Tories, had played a part in embedding in the British state and British society.

However I’m now going to have to admit that I was wrong in my initial assessment and for that I apologise both to Ms Badenoch for misjudging her and to the readers of this blog.

Her initial Commons performances might have lacked fire and it’s clear that she stumbled a few times during her time bedding in as leader, such as falling for the willy waving business with Reform over membership numbers. Back then with her gaffes and her less than confident looking Commons performances and the rumours of a lack of hard work on her part might not have put out the best image of being a suitable Prime Minister, but time has proven me wrong. Ms Badenoch has been putting in better and better Commons performances and is regularly besting the Prime Minister in Commons debates. She’s got a handle on her party’s media machine and her social media videos and appearances along with her appearances on mainstream media political shows are giving a very good impression indeed.

Contrary to her hesitant early start Ms Badenoch has become more and more confident in the House, in the media, on the socials and in personal appearances. She handles questions well and you get the impression that she’s now very much up on her brief. She’s showing passion and is not ashamed of placing herself on the Right of British politics.

But it’s not just scripted or formal occasions when Ms Badenoch is showing her steel, she’s recently proved she can do this off the cuff. Here she is dealing very effectively with some ‘Palestine’ supporting tosser who was heckling her.

I’m quite embarrassed at getting Ms Badenoch wrong. She’s grown into a very effective, very personable Tory leader. I got Boris Johnson wrong as well, I thought that he would govern much further to the Right than he actually did, I judged him via what he had written and that misled me. The early stages of Ms Badenoch’s reign as Tory leader I also have got wrong. Her missteps and initially poor performance in my view coloured my early view of her but she’s learned on the job in what is a very difficult job. Despite my initial dismissal of her she’s done a great job of turning the public image of the Tories around somewhat, she’s also talking much more to the Right which could go down well. Theresa May and Boris Johnson let Britons down very badly. It was on their watch that migration exploded and we got even more deeply mired into Net Zero. It was also a time when the Tories quite readily surrendered to the cultural Left. Because of that record the Tories have lost a lot of the public’s trust and it is Kemi Badenoch’s job to rebuild that trust but most importantly earn that trust by acting on the public’s concerns. Let’s hope she manages to achieve that. So far so good. She’s been direct with the public and moral when she needs to be and seems to be refreshingly free of bullshit waffle. I was wrong about Kemi Badenoch and I hope I keep getting proven wrong about her.

Links

Kemi Badenoch takes no prisoners when confronted with a random ‘Palestine’ heckler

https://x.com/CrewkerneMan/status/2051351421015015885