She may well be sincere.
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“I fully support the Prime Minister,” says the Business Secretary.
“People putting this about are not my friends.
“They don’t care about me or my family.
“They are just stirring.”
This Cabinet shooting star does not want to be seen rocking a sinking ship, even if mutinous MPs think she might save it from going down with all hands.
Fans were clapping yesterday after she sacked Post Office boss Henry Staunton, stood up for UK plc on the world stage and blasted a Labour MP for telling “lies”.
Leftie Kate Osborne had accused her of likening trans youngsters to “spreading a disease”.
Mrs Badenoch retorted: “I never said that.
“This is a lie.”
Kemi, who also serves as Equalities Minister, told Trevor Phillips on Sky News yesterday: “It is important that people speak the truth.”
Her readiness to spell out inconvenient truths has propelled her to the top of British politics.
“Tory members watching that interview will have seen someone speaking with clarity, focus and grit,” said Tim Montgomerie, whose Conservative Home website represents grassroots Tories.
“They will be thinking, ‘I wouldn’t mind Kemi as leader’.”
This should ring alarm bells in Downing Street as embattled Rishi fends off the pro-BoJo snipers and Truss-ites who have stuck a bullseye on his back.
For them, the PM still looks more like a Treasury bean-counter than a leader who can see off Labour’s insipid Keir Starmer.
Even before yesterday’s tour of TV studios, Kemi was way ahead of her nearest rivals in Tory polls.
Scenting blood
Voters of all parties are infuriated by blathering politicians who refuse to answer straight questions.
They like combative Kemi’s readiness to meet them head on.
After 14 years of tin-eared Tory drift, there is hunger among true blue supporters for action on illegal immigration, creeping state intrusion and the ballooning we-know-best woke public sector.
As a right wing, pro-Brexit supporter of tough border controls, she is already being hailed as a new straight-talking Margaret Thatcher.
This is quite an achievement for the UK-born daughter of Nigerian parents, who was almost unknown until her leadership pitch against Liz Truss just over a year ago.
With the Government now wallowing on 20 per cent in the polls and Nigel Farage’s Reform Party scenting blood, some Tories have abandoned hope for the next election.
But Kemi is right to condemn plotters for yet another leadership revolt.
There is still hope for the Tories under Rishi, if only to limit Labour’s majority by slashing taxes and curbing migration.
After four years as Labour’s lacklustre leader, Sir Keir Starmer KC has made zero impact on British voters according to a huge BBC poll yesterday.
Labour’s poll lead is due almost entirely to the collapse of the Tories.
When asked about Starmer, focus groups wondered why he kept chopping and changing Labour policies.
One wanted to know why, as an anti-imperialist republican Labour MP, he had bent the knee as a Knight Grand Cross of the British Empire.
Rash claim
Another, shown his photograph, mistook him for Nigel Farage.
But it was Rishi Sunak who demonstrated at last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions that Starmer is still vulnerable as leader of a party riven by the Trotskyite hard Left.
The Labour leader was plodding through his scripted jibes at warring Tories.
The Government, said this chivalrous knight of the realm with blunt crudity, was a “s**t-show”.
Then he made a rash claim: “I have changed my party . . . the PM is bullied by his.”
In a delicious twist, Starmer instantly found himself on the sharp end of a Labour skewer.
Corbynite leftie Tahir Ali provoked gasps as he accused Rishi Sunak of having “the blood of thousands of innocent people on his hands” after opposing an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
Since Labour stands shoulder to shoulder with the Government over Israel’s right to defend itself, Ali might have been levelling the same charge at his own leader, Sir Keir Starmer.
He later issued a grovelling apology. Too late.
“That,” said Rishi, “is the face of the changed Labour Party.”