Latest editorial
New Tory leader Kemi Badenoch
HARD-RIGHT shadows lengthened over British politics with the election of culture warrior Kemi Badenoch as Tory leader at the weekend.
Ms Badenoch beat rival Robert Jenrick by 53,806 votes to 41,388 from the shrivelled Conservative membership, less than 73 per cent of whom bothered to vote.
The former business secretary becomes the first black woman to lead a major political party in Britain, a fact she does not make much of.
Once derided by Farage as a ‘fraud,’ Jenrick has defected to Reform, bringing experience and political ruthlessness to the populist right — and raising the unsettling prospect of a Farage-led movement with a seasoned operative pulling the strings, says ANDREW MURRAY
The Tory conference was a pseudo-sacred affair, with devotees paying homage in front of Thatcher’s old shrouds — and your reporter, initially barred, only need mention he’d once met her to gain access. But would she consider what was on offer a worthy legacy, asks ANDREW MURRAY
