Kemi wages war on the 'Tory wets'

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0:51Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots, the Spectator's daily politics podcast. I'm Oscar Edmondson. I'm joined today by James Heal and Noah Hoffman. Now, Kemi Badenock has waged war against the quote-unquote Tory wets by removing the whip from Gavin Barwell. James, can you remind listeners who've blocked out that whole Theresa May period in their mind of firstly who Gavin Barwell is and, you know, what message this is sending to the rest of the party from Kemi Badenock? So Gavin Barwell was the MP for Croydon. He wrote a book called How to Win a Marginal Seat. He then lost the marginal seat. He then became Theresa May's chief of staff in 2017-19, incurred the ire of some Brexiteers, was given a peerage, as failed chiefs of staff often do, and he has gone to House of Lords.

1:37Now, the Conservatives have decided to remove the whip from him. This was written up as a purge. Firstly, I'm not sure you can have one man alone being called a purge. But second of all, conservative sources are keen to say that this wasn't just about kind of his views on net zero, which he's been a big champion of, nor the fact that, for instance, he's taken a different view on membership of the European Court of Human Rights, but also the technicalities about how he's behaved. So he went on a leave of absence, then came back, didn't supposedly ask the Baroness Williams of Trafford, who's the chief whip of the House of Lords, for permission on that, and has also been criticising Kami Badenock online.

2:08And so the party is keen to emphasise this isn't just about policy views or just about the stance on net zero, but also about how people interact with the party leadership and being respectful. So I think it's a bit more nuanced than some of the write-ups, but I would say that it's intended to show that the party has changed. Yesterday, I interviewed Neil O 'Brien, who's the policy lead for the party, and that'll be written up for Coffeehouse later this week. But he was talking about how they needed to show rather than tell that the party had changed. So that's why you're seeing KM Bainock have these kind of red lines when it comes to candidate selection in the House of Commons.

2:40I did ask Neil about the House of Lords, but he sort of demurred on that one. I do think the House of Lords is a little bit different, but it nonetheless can be noticed. When I interviewed Malcolm Offord, who defected to become Reforms leader in Scotland a few months ago, he told me that one of the things that did for him was standing up without the lords criticising net zero and having the likes of Alok Sharma, Theresa May, John Deben John Gamma all saying very much the reverse of that so this is the question for Jeremy Badenog there's a two-fold thing as leader of the opposition she has an unmarked improvement in what she can handle herself but then there's a question about the party management as well thus far it has been a surprise and a pleasant surprise to lots of her supporters and those on the rise of the party that they've been able to shift the party's stance on things such as Net Zero, the ECHR.

3:23One of the things Neil O 'Brien was saying to me was that he expected to have this big fight last summer over ECHR membership. Actually, barely a peep out of it. MPs who privately, on the left of the party, who were warning things, saying that it was going to make Hiroshima look like a picnic, was one quote I was told. Actually, it transpired they went along with it. And now maybe there is something to be said for Kevin Bainock's approach, which was the tortoise rather than the hare on the ECHR bringing in the party with her on these things. But overall, it is going to be something that is seized upon online.

3:50Gavin Barwell has released a statement on LinkedIn about that. But I think that right now, Kimmy Beinock is perceived to be on having a bit of a high bit of momentum. And it's one of those things where I think this decision could have gone either way. There'll be some people listening to this who criticise her, warning that, for instance, there needs to be a broad church. Should they really be kicking people out when the church isn't that full anyway in the congregation? But equally, in the current strength, there's a strong leader who doesn't really have any internal opposition right now, who all MPs of all wings say is doing a pretty good job I think it will be seen in a positive light for her No, do you agree with that?

4:21Do you think this is Kemi Bay not acting from a position of strength? Look, she wants to go into the next general election with these two policy pledges at the forefront of the Conservative Party manifesto so it does pose a lot of questions how candidates who disagree with her could launch a serious campaign effort when they are opposed to the fundamental platforms on which she would be standing. So that's one argument. Of course, there is the broad church issue, but a lot of conservative supporters say that being too much of a broad church actually hindered the party during its 14 years in government, or so they argue.

4:58And then of course, they say that a lot of the views of the more centrist side of the Tory party align more closely with the Lib Dems than the Conservative Party, at least in its current iteration. Those are the sort of main arguments. And I think generally among most conservative supporters, they agree with those arguments. So I do think she will come out of this more strengthened. There's nothing more frustrating when you're a party leader than having people yabbering off in the background, people who do have a big platform and do have a history with the party in a way that can be seen as undermining your authority and undermining the image you're trying to present.

5:36She wants to be someone that leads from the front and she wants to curate the conservative party in her image. And it's very difficult to do that when policy positions are so disparate among people with big platforms in the party. It's also a matter of the difficulties of whipping in the House of Lords. I mean, what punishment can you have for someone who's a seat for life? Michael Heseltine for many years was criticising the party's stance on Brexit. He had the whip taken away and then he subsequently got it back. Baris Farsi, former party chairwoman, had a similar issue. And same with Kevin Barwell.

6:04I mean, he'll still be there sitting there presumably voting with the Tories on most issues. and there's the question about what do you have as a kind of carrot or stick approach there so one wonders if maybe it's a kind of warning to the others I do think it's necessary for the party to clarify this wasn't just about the views and one of the points I raised in LeBron was saying well hang on a sec surely the party sometimes at its best has the kind of so-called wet dry left right traditions actually working together you had Chris Patton for instance Tory Wett who wrote the three manifestos on which Margaret Thatcher won her three victories in the 70s and 80s and he took that line but for him his argument was look we need to show we've changed we need to show that the party is united and they're hoping that once they've demonstrated those credentials then people will start to take notice and I think it is quite telling actually that interestingly Robert Jenrick of course when he was campaigning for leadership in 2024 said that he needs to kick some people out of the party effectively he would have kicked out Liz Truss if he hadn't been the leader of the party and it's ironic isn't it that the way that Kimmy Bainock got one of her two big cut through moments along with the party conference last year was when she kicked out Robert Jenrick of the party at the beginning of the year and stamped her authority on it And there's a certain irony in that sort of solution being proposed by the person who defeated Robert Jenrick in the leadership campaign of September 2024.

7:13And interestingly, as Labour is embracing being a broad church in a way that it hasn't for a long time, I noticed last night a lot of Labour MPs came out to criticise Kemi's decision. And that could be read, perhaps it being seen as a threat. We don't want the Tory party to be more united as we decide to embrace a philosophy of letting people with as disparate views as possible into the party. so that's one way of looking at it of course the other is that Labour will think this sort of tough whipping line that Keir Starmer took didn't work for us and now it's probably gonna the Tories are gonna go through the same rigmarole but there was a sort of sense of real frustration and and almost disgust at what the Tories were doing that did sort of point to a bit of concern about Labour MPs seeing a more united Conservative Party.

8:08Well it'll be interesting to see won't it I mean if Andy Benham does sort of reorientate the political debate on a sort of economic axis, that is very much the Conservatives' great hope. And so they hope that by having quite a united party on that, that's what's going to be able to sort of enable them to not just survive, but thrive for the next election. Well, I think what's interesting with Barwell is also that he's part of this Prosper group. So the caucus of centrist Conservative MPs looking to sort of wrestle the party back to the centre, including people like Ruth Davidson, David Gawke, etc.

8:35But James, have you been surprised that that really doesn't seem to have taken off. I mean, this kind of thing is, what is the constituency within the party? Gavin Barwell is not in the Commons. Gavin Barwell is someone who, even people who share his politics, disagree with how he's gone about it. I think the sort of broad unspoken rule in the Conservative Party is, you're allowed to have differences, just don't go mouthing off on them. And I think that as a result of this, people think that he's out for now, he might be allowed back in further down the line. But I think that it would be nonsense to pretend that in the Conservative Party, just like any other party there are not differences that still very much exist within the party but it's about how you choose to portray them and right now my sense of talking to MPs across the Conservative Party all 116 of the different strands we need to unite or die and they want to band together they're good team players that's something the older MPs are impressed by the new intake they're good team players and so anyone who's not seen as a good player right now I think they're willing to kind of lose because right now it's all about survival and showing that unlike the very difference of reform that they have a sensible policy offering there's a philosophical things that unite them, rather than just a sort of caricatured version of what, you know, anti-immigration sentiment, and also that they are sort of willing to get on with each other.

9:43And that is why there's an interesting contrast in how they are approaching reform now in 2026, as opposed to 2025. 2025, they would go after reform on technical difficulties about the policies, you know, saying, oh, this doesn't add up, etc. Now they've switched very much more to focusing on personalities. You saw this with Kevin Hollenbrake on Question Time, trying to get a rise out of Zia Yusuf. You're seeing this with the comments on David Bull made a few weeks ago about Nigel Farage looking tired. They were seized and amplified on them. They are very much aware that much of this battle is happening online.

10:09Much of this battle is being fought over sort of almost on a weekly, monthly basis. And therefore, all differences in the Conservative Party must be minimised. And that's why everyone is sort of talking up Kimmy Bain-Noc, even though she's doing well, according to most of them. But there are some people who have reservations about her slight tone, etc. She does sometimes go off a message, for instance. She went off a message the other day at the ARC conference when she said that Nigel Farage would be worse than Andy Burnham. That is very much not the party line. But overall, the Conservative family is pretty united by her in the Conservative Party.

10:35Well, moving on then to Burnham and to Labour. Noah, we had a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party last night. Did anything interesting come out of that meeting? Nothing super unexpected. The message Burnham had for Labour MPs was the same one he's been delivering throughout his campaign to take over from Keir Starmer, that he will preside over a broad church where all views are welcome. He will be a present prime minister and party leader in the way that Starmer really wasn't and to his detriment and possibly, you know, a huge contributing factor to his ultimate downfall. Burnham reiterated that he will be in the voting lobbies with MPs.

11:12He wants the PLP to be involved in policymaking and not just be, you know, sort of sheep who have to be let out to vote on policies that the civil service is involved in creating and special advisers where and where they really don't have much of a say. But interestingly, MPs have started to question Burnham a bit more, not in any huge negative sense, but they are starting to make more demands of him rather than kissing the feet of the so-called King of the North. So for instance, you had a group of 80 Labour MPs who demanded Burnham reverse Shabana Mahmood's immigration reforms. Of course, the MP for Makerfield ended up voting for them.

11:54You also had the caucus of Labour MPs representing rural seats coming out and warning Burnham not to focus too much on urban centres. And also reminding him that Labour's credentials with a lot of people who live in the countryside are so deeply damaged from the whole farming inheritance tax saga. So he was starting to face questions. He even mooted the idea of appointing a minister for coastal communities. One of those bizarre jobs that we hear come up. I mean, there's James as the ultimate history buff, I'm sure can take us through some other strange mooted ministerial roles to try and appease MPs.

12:33But the point is that Labour MPs are now getting a bit bold, given that he is certain to become the prime minister and they want to make sure that their asks are on the table with the guy who is promising to listen. So I think this would have been a more interesting exercise once the cabinet and government reshuffle has been announced, because according to some MPs I spoke to, it was a bit of a sort of give me a job exercise where everyone's going, Andy Burnham, can I first of all say how handsome and intelligent you are? How fantastic you look in those shirts. Yeah, I've always said, you know, you'd be a great man, Andy Burnham.

13:03So, I mean, there was an element of that in the room and it's all a bit kumbaya for now. I think, though, it is fair to say he is making a lot of the right noises. You know, I think that it would make sense to govern through the PLP, given they've shown a willingness to rebel, given the tensions, the welfare rebellion and the sister dying debate bled into the party. overall um it is a sense though that we're going to have kind of communities competing against one another how does he kind of square that and thus far he is still potentially having a few hostages to fortune it's one thing moving jobs out of london but it's without private sector investment sustained private sector investment that has been the great success of devolved areas over the past 30 years uh you can have jobs created and there's actually a rich tradition about this you know you've seen i think the secretary of state for wales was created in 1960s by the wilson government before that we had of course chief secretary for ireland and the secretary of state for scotland more recently the minister for merseyside that michael hushstein effectively was and the docklands special brief he had michael fallon was minister for portsmouth um and so there's always an element of sort of trying to cater to these different regions i do think it's interesting though the coastal areas which obviously i think i'm correct saying that three out of the five seats that reformed one of the last election were coastal seats these tend to be much older uh these tend to be places where people retire to and so they're an interesting kind of bellwether and that's where reform could make headroom.

14:20So it's right that he, according to reports we've heard, acknowledged the importance of coastal areas in the kind of battleground between reform and Labour. Overall, we're still very much in the dark about what he intends to do. And I think that it's quite interesting, actually. You know, I think that most people would argue, you know, probably in the spectator, that our view of Keir Starmer is a little bit worse than we thought it would be in 2024. But with a much bigger spectrum with Andy Burnham, he could be more successful given where we are now or he could very much sort of underwhelm a bit like kind of the Liz Trust was the big bang option in 2022 it was a gamble and so right now he's saying a lot of things which the APLP want to hear but which could come back to haunt him such as his comments about the whipping operation at the time when Kevin Bailock was saying very differently so it's all now it's all smiles and sort of sunshine but we wait to see what happens particularly given that he tonight will be talking in his main speech about the public accountability that will be applied to public officials under the so-called Hillsborough law He'll be talking very much about victims.

15:16He'll be talking about the justice for the 97 who died in the Hillsborough Treasury in 1989. Now, on the one sense, that is very admirable and that is very much consistent with his own politics. I was reading today's main speech from the last time he gave one 25 years ago in 2001. And it ends by talking about righting the wrongs of the past. The other, though, is that Prime Minister, you're the guy who has to say no. Harry Truman had on his desk, the buck stops here. The buck stops with him. And on this podcast, last week with Chris Curtis, I talked about, is he going to be able to stand up to producer interests?

15:43Is he going to be standing up to victims groups? And the Tory critique is going to be he's very much beholden to the soft left, to victims groups, to people that must be women, regardless of how good or not their case may be. I will be interested to see, much like Keir Stum was once a top civil liberties lawyer, campaigner against the state, but then was seen to perceive some of the state's institutional failings at various points in his premiership, whether the same thing will happen to Andy Burnham and whether some of the campaign groups who are now very much championing him and some of the MPs which are supporting him end up turning on him when he has to be the guy who says, know.

16:13Perfect. Well, lots of outstanding questions on what Burnham really means for the country, but you'll be the first to hear the answers to those on Coffeehouse Shots. Thank you so much, Neva. Thank you, James. And thank you for listening.

16:35Hey, this is Farnoosh from the So Money podcast. And this episode is sponsored by Smart Travel, a new podcast from NerdWallet. You know that one friend who always finds the best travel deals, picks the right cards, and somehow ends up in first class for the price of coach? Smart travel is like that friend, but in podcast form. They cover all things travel finance, like which travel cards actually pay you back and which just make your wallet heavier for no reason, how to book flights without turning it into a part-time job, which lounges are worth it, and which are just an airport gate with better snacks and worse lighting.

17:12Travel smarter and spend less with help from NerdWallet. Follow Smart Travel wherever you get your podcasts.