Kemi: Gove did something very, very annoying
He had a fling with her married pal
KEMI Badenoch has revealed a cooling in relations with her ‘mentor’ Michael Gove after he had a fling with one of her friends.
The Business and Trade Secretary said her Cabinet colleague had done something ‘ very, very annoying’, admitting that her friendship with the Levelling Up Secretary was ‘not what it used to be’.
It was reported late last year that the Conservative Party’s rising star had had a significant falling-out with Mr Gove, who had championed her for the Tory leadership. It was said divorced Mr Gove had had a relationship with one of Mrs Badenoch’s female friends, whose marriage subsequently ended.
At one point the former political allies were not on speaking terms.
In an interview with The Times yesterday, Mrs Badenoch, 44, confirmed the story for the first time.
‘He did something that was very, very annoying,’ she admitted.
Asked if it ended their friendship, she replied: ‘It’s not what it used to be, but he’s somebody I have to work with.’
Mrs Badenoch hit out at the suggestion that she is being manipulated for the party leadership by Mr Gove – ‘as if I have no thoughts and no opinions of my own’ – and that he writes her speeches.
‘Like they’re saying, “She’s not that bright. It’s some man who is doing this”,’ she said.
And she said that whatever she does, people will assume she is trying to topple the Prime Minister.
‘If I’m abroad making a trade deal, they say I’m on manoeuvres because I’m distancing myself from the Government.
‘But if I’m here making a speech, somehow I’m on manoeuvres too,’ said Mrs Badenoch, who was revealed last month to be part of a WhatsApp group called ‘Evil Plotters’ along with Mr Gove. In the candid interview, the MP for Saffron Walden – with a 25,000 majority – said her banker husband Hamish had the most influence on her career rather than a cabal of shadowy Tory men.
But it was the ‘the stupid Leftie white kids [who] didn’t know what they were talking about’ that she encountered at the University of Sussex that initially pushed her towards conservatism.
Mrs Badenoch also said the abuse she received, including death threats, had intensified since the publication of a book, The Plot, by Mail columnist and former culture secretary Nadine Dorries about the downfall of Boris Johnson and the manoeuvring to replace him. ‘People who have that kind of mindset latch on to it. If you get the unhelpful coalition of mental health issues and propensity to violence, then you read the Nadine Dorries conspiracy theory and decide you want to kill someone – it’s very, very nasty,’ she said.
Mrs Badenoch also claims Mrs Dorries asked her, following her Tory leadership bid in 2022: ‘Shouldn’t you be running for Mayor of London instead?’ She was angered by the suggestion that she should have more limited ambitions, and that she would be more suited to running the capital because she is black.
Mrs Dorries responded on X, formerly Twitter, saying that she had only passed on a message that a party donor wanted Mrs Badenoch to stand for London Mayor. She added that her book claims Rishi Sunak was only ever a ‘stop-gap’ leader and that the Tory plotters saw Mrs Badenoch as ‘the project’.
‘He’s somebody I have to work with’