Kemi Badenoch seems to be enjoying herself. Fresh from skewering Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions on the issue of the coming breach of Labour’s manifesto promises, she was robustly dismissive of Rachel Reeves’s “scene-setter” speech for Budget tax rises.
“The chancellor’s speech was one long waffle bomb, a laundry list of excuses,” the Conservative leader said. It was a phrase that guaranteed her a place in the wall-to-wall coverage of Reeves’s big moment.
You might not guess from her apparent confidence that her leadership hangs by a thread, and that most people, not just in Westminster but in the wider electorate, think that the next election will be a contest between Nigel Farage and whoever is Labour prime minister by then.
Or maybe you would. Maybe Badenoch’s colourful language is a desperate attempt to remain relevant. Her direct style and occasional colloquialisms – yesterday, she also railed against “insane” rates of marginal tax – certainly offer a contrast to the dull and bureaucratic language of Starmer and Reeves.
“Waffle bomb” was reminiscent of Boris Johnson, a terrible prime minister but an entertaining wordsmith. His cleverness with words helped take him to the top job, but was less useful to him when he got to No 10.
Johnson was so inventive that my colleague Simon Walters once compiled a book of his words and phrases called The Borisaurus. I had forgotten that Johnson once called David, now Sir David, Beckham a “banana-booted demigod”. He was often, one had to admit, good with words. Who can forget “Wiff-waff is coming home” at the 2008 Beijing Olympics?
Kemi Badenoch described Rachel Reeves’s pre-Budget speech as ‘one long waffle bomb’ (Getty)
Johnson was also a one-person cottage industry for the manufacture of elaborate denials of ambition. There was more chance of his being “reincarnated as an olive” than becoming prime minister, he said. He used humour to ease his ascent, sometimes at his own expense, as when he said in 2004: “I can hardly condemn Ukip as a bunch of boss-eyed, foam-flecked euro hysterics, when I have been sometimes not far short of boss-eyed, foam-flecked euro hysteria myself.”
His final assault on Theresa May’s compromise Brexit deal was similarly lightened with wit, when he said it was “time to have a complete backstopectomy”.
His humour did not serve him so well as prime minister, as an irritated audience of business leaders can testify, having heard him free-associating about a visit to Peppa Pig World.
A good insult or a colourful turn of phrase can make the life of political journalists more fun, and can help a politician cut through, but they are not the most important thing. William Hague, Badenoch’s predecessor, who faced a similar but less serious predicament, entertained the House of Commons and especially the press gallery, but never really left a mark on Tony Blair.
Blair himself was a great communicator but conspicuously avoided colourful language while he was prime minister. It was only in his memoir that he turned to dramatic invective, with a surprising target, when he berated himself for the Freedom of Information Act: “You idiot. You naive, foolish, irresponsible nincompoop. There is really no description of stupidity, no matter how vivid, that is adequate. I quake at the imbecility of it.”
Of course, journalists would rather politicians used interesting language, while politicians would rather not take the risk of being too interesting for the wrong reasons. Badenoch’s barb at Reeves’s expense worked because it fitted with the criticism of the chancellor’s speech that it sought to blame everyone else for her predicament – one section of it was indeed “a laundry list of excuses”.
But one Johnsonian phrase cannot save Badenoch from the impossible position in which she finds herself. One of the strong sections of Reeves’s speech pointed out that her opponents did not have good answers to the problems the government faces. In particular, Badenoch’s plan for spending cuts of £47bn a year is not credible, not from a party that increased public spending when it was in power. No “waffle bombs” can distract from the Tories’ own contradictions.
