Newsletter #4: Kemi and Bobby’s not-actually-a-debate

PLUS: Ed Miliband Powercut Watch; It’s Reform’s moment — but what’s Nigel Farage up to?; and some miscellaneous updates

Good morning.

Last week was a depressing week, and this will be a depressing newsletter. It has dawned on me that Kemi Badenoch will almost certainly be the next leader of the Conservative Party. And, worse still, Reform are in no fit state to destroy them once this happens. At least we can take solace in the fact that Starmer’s Government seems to be demoralised and in a permanent state of crisis — and that’s before the budget!

This newsletter’s agenda: Kemi and Bobby’s not-actually-a-debate (free); Ed Miliband Blackout Watch (free); It’s Reform’s moment — but what’s Nigel Farage up to? (paid); Some Miscellaneous Updates: Labour versus Trump; Louise Haigh ‘at risk’; the Global South humiliates Britain again (paid)

The first and second sections are free. Upgrade to a paid subscription — normally £8/month (or £80/year), but ten percent off for one year until the end of October, click here! — to read rest of this newsletter.

Kemi and Bobby’s not-actually-a-debate

‘Now’s not the time for policies. We need to Renew. Kemi is an Engineer. It’s time to get serious.’

In my very first newsletter, I implored Tory MPs to not make me have to talk about Kemi Badenoch ever again. Sadly, they have failed me. She now looks like the overwhelming favourite for next Tory leader. Jenrick had a lot of ground to make up in very little time at all, and he has clearly not done this.

We should begin by saying that the format of this first not-actually-a-debate on GB News — and indeed, not-even-a-head-to-head — disgraces the Conservative Party (not that they care!), and raises suspicions of an outright stitch-up from high up in CCHQ, given that Badenoch is the Michael Gove-Dougie Smith candidate. (CCHQ has, meanwhile, been doing all it can to sabotage a proposed debate between the two candidates on the BBC.) The format was as follows: first, Jenrick gave his stump speech, then answered some audience questions; and then, ‘Kemi’ did the same. The candidates were, in effect, hermetically sealed off from each other; barred from interacting in any way — how ridiculous. Everyone at CCHQ, it seems, is desperate to not have ‘Kemi’ appear too much in public (friends tell me that she was almost invisible at Party Conference, even when the cameras were not rolling). When there is no option but for her to appear, it is clear that everyone knows it is critical that she just gives her pre-prepared stump speech and leaves; ideally, she should be challenged as little as possible, lest she blows up. This is a remarkable position for a would-be Prime Minister to be in. However excited you are about the prospect of puppeteering an idiot in order to pursue your own murky agenda, surely you must know that this cannot continue forever?

There is no getting around it: the chosen format greatly benefitted ‘Kemi’. Jenrick is at his best when engaging in a back-and-forth, and does particularly well (especially compared to Badenoch) when challenged. Although he is not a terrible speaker, the stump speech is not his strength. Jenrick appeared nervous; Badenoch looked a lot more comfortable. Nothing new of any real interest was said by either candidate, but when it came to delivery, ‘Kemi’ was a little bit better than Jenrick. On the basis of the not-actually-a-debate alone, we can perhaps forgive the audience for siding with ‘Kemi’, just this one time.

Yet the overwhelmingly positive response of members to Kemi Badenoch is not just because of Jenrick’s public speaking skills, or relative lack thereof. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that the senile Tory membership are just absolutely, completely desperate to see a black lady agreeing with their politics, and that alone is enough to get them to vote for ‘Kemi’. This seems to be especially true of older members; younger members, at least so far as I can tell, are generally much more pro-Jenrick, but are numerically swamped by the pensioner vote (what else is new!). ‘Kemi’, according to Andrew Roberts, who seems representative of the older members in this regard, is the next Margaret Thatcher. ‘Thatcher was a mere chemist, they said; Kemi is an engineer [really now — I didn’t know!] and so not from the Politics, Philosophy and Economics-infused world of so many modern politicians’, he gurgles in a truly embarrassing column for the Daily Mail. Roberts somehow continues on with an even bigger clanger: ‘Thatcher came from Grantham, the 1970s equivalent of Kemi’s Nigerian heritage…’. Right…

Even beyond the membership, that there is informal affirmative action in operation within the Conservative Party seems almost beyond question. By my count, there are currently just four black Conservative MPs: Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Helen Grant, and Ben Obese-Jecty. Of these four, one — Obese-Jecty — was first elected in 2024, and so (unsurprisingly) hasn’t been up to much just yet. Of the other three, two — Badenoch and Cleverly — have become very senior figures in the Party. If it wasn’t for Cleverly messing up, we would have had an entirely black final! This seems extraordinary for statistical reasons alone. At least the three black Conservative former MPs who have obtained senior positions in Government — Bim Afolami, Sam Gyimah (who later defected to the Liberal Democrats), and Kwasi Kwarteng — have fairly impressive educational backgrounds. Another former black Conservative MP, Adam Afriyie, the former MP for Windsor, was a (rather dodgy) multi-millionaire businessman. Not so with Cleverly and Badenoch, who both have distinctly mediocre educational backgrounds and careers, yet have enjoyed a meteoric political rise, despite displaying very little evidence of any kind of talent. Why indeed.

Michael Gove, one of the worst figures in British politics — a symbol of everything rotten about the last fourteen years of the Conservative Party — has made this appeal on the basis of race very explicit. Gove informs us that the problem with Jenrick is that ‘he looks like a typical Tory politician… given the strength of feeling against Tory boys expressed at the last general election, that’s a challenge’.

This is a ridiculous assessment of what happened at the last election. What happened was that the Tories betrayed the electorate on almost every single thing that they were elected on, while appearing corrupt and incompetent to boot. It’s not a matter of ‘presentation’ — more of the same, but now with a black woman saying it, brilliant! Restoring trust in the Party means making clear what you stand for, what you want to do, and how you are going to achieve it. Robert Jenrick, ‘Tory boy’ or not, does this. Kemi Badenoch does not. It’s that simple.

Ed Miliband Blackout Watch

JOHNNNNMAAAANNNNNNNNNN

Ed Miliband is a bona fide climate fanatic, and the most dangerous member of Keir Starmer’s Cabinet by some distance. Ed Miliband is, essentially, a political dinosaur. For all of their public posturing, I am sure that many in the Labour Party (especially, I imagine, the younger ones) are much more aware than they were in the past that Britain’s energy situation has become extraordinarily precarious, mostly because of the failed policies of the Tories, many of which were related to ‘Net Zero’.

But not Ed. Ed Miliband is clearly very attached to the fact that, as Energy Secretary under Gordon Brown, he was responsible for completely re-writing British energy policy, and setting the groundwork for the Net Zero policies that have gotten us into such a mess recently. Since being returned to his old position by Starmer, he has gone about digging Britain even deeper into the hole: keeping up all of our unworkable climate change commitments; and lots of emphasis on wind and solar, while mostly ignoring not just fossil fuels, but also nuclear.

So much for Red Ed. But what about the grid over the next few months? On Monday 14 October, the National Energy System Operator (NESO) issued an Capacity Market Notice (CMN), warning of a potential shortfall between projected supply and demand for electricity. It was, it must be admitted, withdrawn just a few short hours later, but this is still remarkable: it is very early in the year for a CMN to be been issued. Quite rightly, we should be asking questions about the state of the British grid as we head into winter. Will there be an Ed Miliband Blackout?

Last winter, Britain’s National Grid hit maximum crisis point, with contingency coal power capacity brought online in order to keep the lights on. This came in the form of West Burton A (Lincolnshire), which had a capacity of 1.3GW, and the coal units of Drax (Yorkshire) which had a capacity of 0.66GW. Since last winter, these contingencies, both of which had already had their life extended at considerable cost, have been closed. Additionally, Ratcliffe-on-Soar (Nottinghamshire), which provided 2.1GW of daily electricity for the grid, has also been closed, much to the delight of Ed Miliband, who put out a poorly-received video on X to celebrate this ‘achievement’. In total, then, we are looking at 4.06GW less electricity available due to the closures of Britain’s three final coal power stations. Without this power, all else being equal, there would have been blackouts last winter, despite (as many will remember) that winter in fact being relatively mild by British standards.

Fortunately for Dopey Ed, all else is not quite equal: Britain’s biggest individual energy consumer, the steel mill in Port Talbot, has been shut down, most likely permanently. Additionally, a new 1.4GW interconnector between Britain and Denmark (the ‘Viking Link’) has been brought fully online. However, even with these mitigating factors, it is a simple fact that there is less capacity available for this winter than there was last winter. The first CMN being fired off by the grid so early in the year — before solar has even completely dropped off! — should set alarm bells ringing.

The new ‘Viking Link’ is a landmark moment for this country — for all the wrong reasons. Thus far, all of our interconnectors have either been funnelling trivial amounts of electricity to the island of Ireland, or skimming off French nuclear power or Norwegian gas. The interconnector with Denmark, by contrast, represents the first interconnector where, ideally, for large parts of the year, both sides would have the cable set to ‘import’. During the summer months, when there is much more slack in the European electricity grid, this is less of an issue. In winter, however, there will be little to no slack in continental Europe. Furthermore, although the interconnectors are intended to make renewable energy more reliable, the truth is that wind speeds are typically fairly closely correlated across countries, so they will only be of limited assistance. As such, the 1.4GW additional capacity that it seems outwardly to provide may prove illusory just when it is needed most.

One final point, this time in the Grid’s favour: the last few winters have given them a chance to roll out and give adequate publicity to its ‘Demand Flexibility Service’ — a fancy name for what is in reality an incredibly crude scheme to pay people not to use electricity when they cannot meet demand. With more than one million households and businesses signed up, the tiny margins gained from this could be what saves Red Ed’s bacon. Of course, giving people the illusion of choice in how they give up their electricity is a total sham, but at least it will be controlled.

Pimlico Journal Verdict: The chance of a big blackout this winter is roughly 50/50. Don’t listen to NESO, who claimed that Britain would have a sizeable margin for error — then, just weeks later, were forced to issue the unprecedented CMN. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see that previous winters, when combined with our current non-intermittent electricity capacity (which has fallen due to the closure of coal power plants), would, prime facie, suggest powercuts. We have, however, also cut energy use both through deindustrialisation and through paying people and businesses not to use electricity. The unstoppable force of Net Zero will meet the immovable object of deindustrialisation — who wins? In any case: Buy a torch, and send January’s articles to the printer in the possible event you need emergency entertainment!

It’s Reform’s moment — but what’s Nigel Farage up to?

‘Not a good look.’

With ‘Kemi’ looking like the overwhelming favourite in the Tory leadership contest, Reform have a big opportunity. Soon enough, they will probably getting a truly massive wad of cash from me (a full twenty-five White English Pounds from purchasing a membership, entirely paid for by my valued subscribers).