Kemi Badenoch has a fatal flaw – and she will fail as Tory leader if she doesn’t address it

If the 44-year-old MP today becomes leader of the opposition, she would be well advised to call a truce in her unwinnable war with the media, says Andrew Grice

If Kemi Badenoch becomes Conservative leader, as many in her party expect, she will need to learn from a big mistake she has made during the leadership contest.

She has had a prickly relationship with the media, which she seems to think is out to get her. Wrongly, in my view: journalists are doing their job in putting her under scrutiny as she runs for an important job.

After Badenoch grabbed unwanted headlines with her controversial comments about maternity leave, the national minimum wage and autism, one ally told me: “She is trying to discuss issues, but journalists use her remarks selectively and twist them. It’s ‘gotcha’ journalism. It’s the media who must change.  We are not going to play their game.”

Badenoch told Sophy Ridge on Sky News this week: “What I find very frustrating is I’m asked a speculative question where I give a speculative thought, and that is then presented as a firm point of view. And I don’t want to have that kind of conversation. I want us to have a serious conversation about what it is that we’re trying to deliver, what makes sense for the society that we have today.”

Welcome to the real world, Kemi. A politician gives an answer – Badenoch says she likes to give a straight one – and, surprisingly, the media reports her words.

She often takes to X (formerly Twitter) to hit back at reports she doesn’t like, sometimes branding them a “smear”. She launched an ad hominem attack on my colleague Nadine White when White worked for The Huffington Post.

To the abrasive Badenoch, this is in line with her mantra: I don’t start fights, but if someone attacks me, I hit back in kind. Fair enough – but her advisers would be wise to advise her not to declare war on the media or individual journalists if she is installed as Tory leader. She would discover that the media always has the last word, and that the pen really is mightier than the sword.

As Boris Johnson said recently (and rightly so): “You’ve got to realise – and some politicians, for some reason, don’t see this – the media are speaking for the voiceless, and for the powerless, and for those who never get in the room with politicians, who never have a chance to put angry or impertinent questions. There’s no point politicians feeling personally aggrieved by journalists.”

Badenoch’s Tory critics believe her problems stem from her tendency to shoot from the lip. On the three occasions mentioned above, she had to clarify her remarks. Is that the media’s fault, or hers?

For most of the Tory contest, Badenoch appeared to want to avoid scrutiny. She declined any head-to-head debates with her opponent Robert Jenrick. They appeared on the same TV programme only once – on GB News – but were questioned separately. Like most observers, I thought Badenoch “won”.

The most likely explanation is that she believed she was ahead and didn’t want to take unnecessary risks. (Arguing about the terms of debates is a trick both Labour and Tory leaders have deployed at general elections, when they didn’t want to take part in them but didn’t want to admit it.)

Badenoch drove broadcasters to despair by repeatedly turning down requests for interviews, and was dubbed a “submarine” by some Tories. Then, in the final week of the campaign, the submarine suddenly surfaced, and Badenoch gave a flurry of interviews. Her aides pointed to the likelihood of a low turnout in the election. Others suspect that, while she was widely seen as the favourite, her team feared on the last lap that the race was too close to call.

Badenoch’s current approach to the media is untenable for a leader of the opposition. However much she dislikes journalists, she will discover, if she is given the role, that she needs them. In government, you can implement policies, but in opposition, all you can do is talk, and the media is the only way to get your message to voters.

Badenoch is not the first politician to think they don’t need the media, or to reject the govern-by-headline approach Tony Blair imported from opposition to power, along with the “grid” of daily announcements required in a 24/7 media world. Theresa May recoiled from it as prime minister, but it didn’t work. More recently, when Keir Starmer’s Downing Street left a vacuum, the media filled it with stories about freebies.

Jenrick is at the opposite end of the media spectrum from Badenoch. No microphone has been safe from him during the Tory contest. He has grabbed every interview opportunity with relish, and even done “regional media rounds” on every available local radio station. As leader, Jenrick would be more adept at using the media than would Badenoch. Voters might or might not warm to him, but they would definitely notice him. And that is the first task for a leader of the opposition, which many politicians regard as the toughest job in their trade.

Badenoch might think the media battle is all a game, but it’s a pretty important one. If she becomes Tory leader and refuses to play it, she will fail.