Could Kemi Badenoch’s Post Office showdown wreck her No 10 ambitions?

The business secretary has taken an unusual risk with her war of words with Henry Staunton, the former Post Office boss she sacked – and it looks sure to backfire on her, says John Rentoul

Business secretary Kemi Badenoch’s combativeness has been an asset to her so far, but is it turning into a liability? (PA)

People like a risk-taker, and there is something exhilarating about Kemi Badenoch’s recklessness.

Conservatives like her because she is so aggressively dismissive of Labour MPs convinced of their own righteousness – and a lot of non-Conservatives like her because she is so unlike most cautious, evasive and bland politicians.

Her statement in the Commons yesterday was high drama. Advertised as a statement on “Post Office Governance and Horizon Compensation Schemes”, which could hardly have sounded duller, she launched straight into an escalation of her personal war against Henry Staunton, whom she sacked as chair of the Post Office.

He had made “serious allegations” against the government, her department and its officials that are “completely false”, she started by saying. She listed three of them, repeated that they were untrue, and laid into Staunton personally. His conduct “merely confirms in my mind that I made the correct decision in dismissing him”. His allegations were “a disgrace” and “a blatant attempt to seek revenge following dismissal”.

It is so unusual to hear a cabinet minister speaking in such terms in parliament that the press gallery was agog. We were expecting a forceful performance – after all, she had accused Staunton of “lies” on Twitter/X the day before – but we thought she might moderate her language somewhat, with a view to her political survival.

But no. She did not repeat the L-word, accusing Staunton of “falsehoods” instead, but she seemed completely unconcerned about any threat to her future career in taking such a categorical position.

Hence the drama. Either she is telling the truth or he is. Her assertions were so emphatic that she seemed to be taking an unusual risk. She is currently the favourite to become Conservative leader after the election, assuming Rishi Sunak loses. And almost all leaders of the Conservative Party become prime minister. (There was a gap between 1997 and 2005, when William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard became the only Tory leaders in history not to become prime minister, but circumstances are different now.)

Yet here she was, seemingly prepared to throw all that away for the sake of a feud with a business leader who has a good reputation for straight dealing.

Let us count the risks she is taking. First, her comments on Twitter/X are not covered by parliamentary privilege, so Staunton could sue her. Second, her comments in the Commons, although they are protected from legal action, expose her to the danger of being accused of misleading the House – which, if found to be true, would be the end of her political career.

Third, she may be confident of her ground, but these disputes have a tendency to roll out of the control of the original disputants, and the facts tend to be more complicated than either side presents them.

Already, Labour MPs sense weakness. Chris Bryant, former chair of the privileges committee, said of Badenoch’s statement in the Commons: “All very ‘protest too much’. I suspect this story isn’t over.”

In this case, the really serious charge is that a “fairly senior person” told Staunton, soon after he was appointed, to “stall on spend on compensation” for subpostmasters wrongly accused of fraud.

“There is no evidence that this is true,” Badenoch told the Commons. She didn’t say it, she said, and she didn’t think any of her officials would have done either. “It is quite likely that this is something that he is making up.” But that is rather different from saying it is “completely false”, which is what she started off by saying.

Staunton, on the other hand, says that he does have evidence, in the form of an email he sent to himself and to colleagues at the time, because he was so surprised to be told to try to defer spending until after the election when it would, presumably, be the Labour government’s problem.

A contemporaneous note would not be conclusive, but it would help to support his account. So far, he has not published the email, but it must surely surface soon. If he cannot find it, someone he sent it to might. Everything on the internet leaves a trace. Meanwhile Liam Byrne, the Labour chair of the business select committee, has summoned Staunton to give evidence and has asked to see the email.

If the email appears, it may take the war to a new level. The other allegations against Badenoch, and the counter-allegations against Staunton, seem less important. He says she told him he was being sacked because “someone’s got to take the rap” for the Horizon scandal, whereas she says it was for other reasons – and neither those words nor the sentiment appear in the civil service note of the phone call, which she published yesterday.

She also says that he had been investigated for allegations of bullying; he says he knows nothing about it.

But it is the suggestion that the government tried to slow down the payment of compensation to the victims of the miscarriage of justice that is really dangerous to Badenoch. She may protest that she personally never authorised any such thing, but she has been so categorical in saying that the claim is false that she will be in trouble if there is any hint of substance to it.

Her combativeness has been an asset to her so far in her stellar career, running for the Tory leadership two years ago after just five years as an MP. But her “do or die” stand this week may turn it suddenly into a liability.