Newsletter #16: Krazy Kemi in potentially libellous blunder

PLUS: Zia Yusuf’s rise to prominence; the American ‘tech right’ butts heads with MAGA; and some mini-updates

Good morning.

Krazy Kemi has blundered. Not much else has happened, except online (in fact, Krazy Kemi’s blunder was also online). It’s the holidays after all. Most of what has happened, then, has probably been people, bored of holiday telly slop, taking a well-earned break from their family…

This newsletter’s agenda: Krazy Kemi in potentially libellous blunder (free); Zia Yusuf’s rise to prominence (paid); American ‘Tech Right’ butts heads with ‘MAGA’ (paid); Mini-updates: Rory Campbell; Lindsay Hoyle; Tim Montgomerie (paid)

Krazy Kemi in potentially libellous blunder

In her latest gaffe (I thought she never made any!) Kemi Badenoch has (falsely) accused Reform UK of making up its membership numbers. The context, for those who weren’t following (presumably too busy with family at Christmas to worry about politics), is that Reform UK — who had a membership ticker on their website — made a big deal about surpassing the Conservative Party’s membership numbers (as verified by the recent leadership election) on Boxing Day. Predictably, Nigel Farage made a big deal out of this on X, wishing the Leader of the Opposition a ‘Merry Christmas’ and projecting their achievement onto the Conservative Party’s headquarters. All rather embarrassing for the Conservatives, especially given that their own membership figures — as all Tories know — are in fact greatly inflated, mostly due to their failure to remove dead people from the membership roll. (Reform, with a huge surge in membership this month, have now reached 152,000 members.) The correct response for the Tories is probably to mostly ignore these provocations, and to get on with the job of winning back the trust of the Right.

‘Kemi’, however, had a different idea. She responded by saying that she, an engineer, had been ‘watching the back end for days’, that the figures were ‘not real’ and were the product of a ‘fake [clock emoji] coded to tick up automatically’. This seems to be on the basis of a simple misunderstanding of how Reform’s website works. Badenoch, seeing that the ticker increased at regular intervals — either through observation or through looking at the website’s publicly-accessible code — seemed to assume, therefore, that the numbers were invented. In reality, all that was happening was that the ticker was periodically sending out a request to grab a number from the database of Reform members. There was no way to verify the numbers — the database itself is private — but her (apparent) assertions as to how the ticker worked are simply false.

There are a number of interesting aspects to Badenoch’s ill-advised outburst, which merely served to embarrass the party and give more attention to Reform. Firstly, her thread was most likely sent out with no, or minimal, consultation with her advisors (who, despite my very low opinion of CCHQ, I believe would have told her not to post it). The thread, quite apart from the inaccuracy of her claims, is riddled with spelling (‘Alister Campbell’) and grammar errors. It was also posted on Boxing Day, when I doubt many people at CCHQ were working. The allegations are also too explosive to be presented as a fun little bit of ‘rigmarole’ — she’s accusing the leader of Britain’s third-biggest party of (effectively) committing fraud! You can’t be saying things like this unless you’re completely certain.

My guess is that Badenoch, after a little too much ‘butter and alcohol’ (which she said were the secret for a great Christmas), posted this in anger after Reform’s little stunt. In fact, this is the more charitable interpretation — because if her advisors thought this was a good idea, then CCHQ — an institution I hold in the utmost contempt — is even worse than I thought.

Secondly, it shows Badenoch’s massive overconfidence in her own abilities. Presumably, part of what happened is that she, thinking herself an ‘engineer’, wrongly assumed that she knew what was happening on Reform’s website. Clearly this was not correct. Will she now tone down the ‘engineer’ schtick?

Thirdly, even assuming Badenoch got her foolish idea signed off by CCHQ, why would she herself be sent out to make the accusations? Ordinarily, you’d want to keep the Leader away from this sort of muck. It makes you look grimy; like an attack dog, not a potential Prime Minister. Every good Leader should have their attack dogs, and Badenoch is, of course, a serviceable enough attack dog. But the role of attack dog has surprisingly little to do with the role of Prime Minister — a role in which people expect different things. In fact, they are in some respects diametrically opposed roles. She seems to have had trouble adjusting from one role to another. It’s probably no surprise that very few people see her as a future Prime Minister — unlike Cameron, who (for better or for worse) was immediately seen this way as soon as he became Leader of the Opposition.

Is there the potential for Reform to win a libel case against Badenoch? Badenoch has not, after all, taken down the post, even after it seems to have been proven totally false: although Badenoch’s logic was faulty, and it always seemed unlikely that Reform would invent their membership figures, there was originally no way to actually verify them. However, Reform have now voluntarily shown journalists from a number of mainstream outlets that their figures are real, which seems to put the matter to bed.

There have been rumblings from Reform that they might indeed take legal action against Badenoch. Yusuf posted a poll on X asking whether they should, and said that he’d be happy to audit his membership roll on the condition that the Tories also did. On GB News, Farage demanded an apology and said:

I don’t mind all sorts of comments being made about me, but to be accused by her of being a fraudster… I’m sorry, I’m not going to let this rest.

Unfortunately, a number of friends have told me that the chances for success are surprisingly low for Reform, despite Badenoch making what seems to be an obviously false and defamatory comment. There are a number of issues: the amount of time (and money, though Reform are doing better on this front than the Tories right now) that libel cases take, even when they seem fairly cut and dry; proving ‘serious harm’ from Badenoch’s comments (which is more difficult for public figures, and even more difficult for a company, if Reform UK itself sues); that it isn’t entirely clear what Reform would gain from taking action; and that the discovery process might be damaging even if they win.

But the critical problem is that ‘honest belief’ provides ample protection for idiots. Of course, it would be very embarrassing for the Leader of the Opposition to rely upon her own stupidity in order to protect herself and her party, but it seems obvious how Badenoch’s many propagandists in the media would spin such an outcome.

And after all, Badenoch certainly does still have many propagandists. While GB News are now mostly on Team Reform, and even The Telegraph has given more and more space to Farage and friends, not just The Spectator — which is increasingly irrelevant — but The Times — the most important newspaper in the country (no, it isn’t a tabloid, tabloids don’t matter much anymore) — is still on her side; indeed, blatantly, transparently so.

Soon after her colossal gaffe, she called up her friends at The Times and got some poor sod to write her a puff piece on Boxing Day: ‘The Times View On: Kemi Badenoch’. Unfortunately — in a partial repeat of her original gaffe — rather than getting a close ally to boost the piece, as you’d expect from anyone sensible, she decided to do the deed herself. It’s all looking a bit embarrassing. Is there a chance that Kemi will Go earlier than we think?

Zia Yusuf’s rise to prominence