Russell Jones's Week Moment: Semi GoodEnough Steaks Her Claim

The bestselling author of 'The Decade in Tory' on Kemi Badenoch's spectacularly poor start to her new job

Time for lunch? Photo: ZUMA Press, Inc / Alamy

For Kemi Badenoch, it must seem like all her Christmases have come at once.

She’s achieved her lifelong ambition of becoming Tory leader, as an inadvertent consequence of most of her own MPs thinking she was the weakest candidate; she’s up against Keir Starmer, who can’t always be relied upon to pass one of those online tests to prove you're not a robot; his government remains staggeringly mediocre, and Labour has nosedived in the polls.

And now, to add to Badenoch’s glee, on 22 December she will mark 50 days in the job, thus exceeding the mayfly lifespan of Liz Truss, an achievement that political scientists believe to be the faintest praise it is possible to bestow.

Not that this has deterred Semi GoodEnough. What can? She is as indomitable as Truss was domitable, and boy, does she want you to know it. For a modern Conservative, lasting longer than Margerine Thatcher is quite a milestone, and in giddy expectation of the big day, Badenoch has been decorating our front pages with the sort of subtlety and taste usually reserved for the home of that oddball neighbour with so many illuminated Christmas lawn ornaments that it poses a hazard to passing aircraft.