Kemi Badenoch “had no respect” for former Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak and secretly tried to bring him down before the last general election, a new book has claimed.
Ms Badenoch, who succeeded Mr Sunak as Tory leader after the 2024 election, thought he was “rude to her” and wanted to “take him out without being seen to wield the knife”. And, says the book, her disloyal antics contributed to the scale of the Tory election defeat.
They are among the dramatic claims made in a new book about Mr Sunak by Britain’s leading political biographer Sir Anthony Seldon, which is being serialised in The Independent.
Seldon says relations between Mr Sunak and Ms Badenoch had never been warm.
He claims she was covertly involved in a failed bid to replace Sunak in No 10 in 2023 – the year before the election – around the time his government was rocked by cabinet resignations over immigration.
According to Seldon, after meeting Ms Badenoch to reject her call for tougher immigration laws as demanded by rebel Tories, furious Mr Sunak claimed they wanted to provoke him into telling them to “f*** off”, as an excuse to make Tory divisions even worse.
Seldon’s book, Sunak at 10: The Last Conservative PM? says Ms Badenoch, who was at the time business secretary, backed dissident Tory MPs defying Mr Sunak because, according to one source, “Kemi did not respect Rishi – she thought he was rude to her.”
She told others conspiring against Mr Sunak over immigration that if they got enough Tory MPs to support them she would give him an “ultimatum” – if he refused to back down she would resign from the cabinet in protest, writes Seldon.
“Some plotters were more bullish, insisting she had promised she would ‘take him out’,” he adds.
Ms Badenoch and her team had been “mulling over” triggering a cabinet mutiny against Mr Sunak to force him out since Robert Jenrick, who has since defected to Reform, resigned from the cabinet in December 2023, states Seldon.
She phoned several cabinet ministers asking them “if anyone was interested in changing the captain”.
Her main worry was not Mr Sunak’s fate, but her desire “to avoid the image of wielding the knife”.
Seldon says he was informed by one of Mr Sunak’s cabinet ministers: “Kemi was not well behaved. Her team were agitating.”
An unnamed Tory MP, who is current member of Ms Badenoch’s front bench, told Seldon she was “a menace who orchestrated trouble in the cabinet” when Mr Sunak was struggling to make his mark in No 10.
Former Tory MP Danny Kruger, who defected to Reform last year, told Seldon that Ms Badenoch “definitely wanted it [to oust Sunak from No 10 and replace him] but was concerned about being a fag-end prime minister”.
The reason Ms Badenoch eventually decided against challenging Mr Sunak before the July 2024 election had nothing to do with loyalty, argues Seldon.
It was because it was too close to polling day – and she thought she would be blamed for the near certain defeat.
Seldon argues that hostility towards Mr Sunak, fomented by Ms Badenoch and other Tories, did indeed play a part in Labour’s landslide victory.
Seldon says he was told by an insider that Ms Badenoch “was actively looking at bringing Sunak down, constructing imaginary cabinets and offering jobs”.
Mr Sunak talked her out of it and Ms Badenoch “kept her powder dry”.
The book suggests another reason Ms Badenoch backed away from challenging Mr Sunak was not out of loyalty to him – she feared if she did force him out, the Tory crown would be “snatched” from her by cabinet rival Penny Mourdant.
The machinations provoked the usually mild-mannered Mr Sunak to rage against what he called “attention-seeking” rebel Conservatives.
Seldon says Mr Sunak told his aides: “They probably want me to tell them to f*** off so they can pontificate, but I have a country to run. I’m not going to rise to the bait!”
Seldon adds: “The price of all their unrest… as Sunak foresaw, was to depress the party’s voting support as the electorate was sick of Tory infighting.”
Ms Badenoch has always strong denied being disloyal to Sunak.
Extracted from ‘Sunak at 10: The Last Conservative Prime Minister?’ by Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton, Atlantic Books. On sale 27 August, hardback, £25
