Kemi Badenoch is a member of a conservative WhatsApp group called ‘Evil Plotters’, despite telling party rebels to ‘stop messing around’ and stand behind Rishi Sunak, the Guardian can reveal.
The business secretary, who consistently emerges as the favorite minister in opinion polls among Tory members, has criticized party colleagues for “fueling” suggestions she could replace the prime minister.
In a round of interviews on Sunday, she dismissed speculation about the plot to overthrow Sunak as “Westminster drivel” and said colleagues who put her name forward as an alternative were “not my friends”.
However, the Guardian has been told that Badenoch and Michael Gove, the foreign secretary, who is seen as a key backer, are members of a WhatsApp group of like-minded Tory MPs who are backing the business secretary’s ambitions on the long term.
Tory sources said that while Badenoch was not actively planning to oust Sunak before the next election, her team was prepared to “take action” if the prime minister were forced to resign, or if he resigning as party leader after an election defeat.
Speculation has arisen in Westminster after a group of anonymous Tory donors funded a poll suggesting Sunak would lead his party to electoral oblivion at the next election, sparking speculation about who could be behind a plot . There is no indication that Badenoch is involved.
However, the Guardian understands that when Suella Braverman was sacked as home secretary two months ago, some of Badenoch’s allies advised her to keep quiet and wait for the row to blow over so she could emerge as “the reasonable face”. from the Tory right. .
“Kemi will not try to oust Rishi herself, she knows the hand that wields the knife never wears the crown,” said a Tory insider. “But she has a campaign ready for when the moment finally comes.”
A friend of Badenoch suggested that while she had not explicitly instructed her allies to plan and prepare for a leadership campaign, she had given them the signal to go ahead. “It will be with her consent and not by her orders,” they said.
“She’s not going to have meetings with people saying, ‘When are we going to set up the phone banks?’ She finds it all distasteful. She’s not going to do what Penny Mordaunt does, which is endless little drinks that stroke people’s egos. She hates that.’
Tory MPs say Badenoch remains close to Gove, despite reports last year that the pair had fallen out, and that they have restored a working relationship and speak regularly.
In recent weeks they have also sent messages to the Evil Plotters WhatsApp group, perhaps an ironic nod to former minister Nadine Dorries’ book The Plot, which claimed Gove was trying to install Badenoch as leader, which allies of both have denied.
The business secretary also holds regular lunches with her key backers in Parliament, believed to include Housing Secretary Lee Rowley, Digital Secretary Julia Lopez, Cabinet Office Minister Alex Burghart, and the Tory deputy leader for women, Rachel Maclean.
They were among the MPs who supported her during the Tory leadership battle to take over from Boris Johnson as she reached the last four. Rowley, who served as Badenoch’s 2022 campaign manager, is said to have continued in the role unofficially.
James Roberts, the former head of the TaxPayers’ Alliance who managed Badenoch’s list of recommendations in 2022, joined her team as a special adviser in June 2023, with sources suggesting he is “still working on leadership matters” despite his official role .
A spokesperson for Badenoch did not deny the WhatsApp group’s claim, but said: “This is exactly the kind of commotion Kemi was referring to when she told people to stop messing around on Sunday.
“Having lunch, speaking to MPs and having a special parliamentary adviser is not a conspiracy, it is the daily task of a State Secretary. This utter nonsense is clearly part of a targeted campaign against Kemi and anyone reading this should treat it as such.”
During a tour of the broadcast studios on Sunday, Badenoch did not deny he had ambitions for the top job, telling the BBC: “If you had asked me two years ago in January 2022, I would have laughed it off and said it a completely crazy idea.
“You never really know these things until you’re in the moment. What I want to remind people is that after Liz Truss left, I stood up and said I wasn’t going to run anymore; Rishi is the person who has to do the job. I did that because I worked with him [at] at the Ministry of Finance I knew that he had a grip on the economy.”
She also said speculation among Tory colleagues about her ambitions was “all a distraction”, telling Sky News: “They need to stop messing around and get behind the leader.
‘The fact is that most people in the country are not interested in all this Westminster stuff. Honestly, the people who keep putting my name in there aren’t my friends. They don’t care about me. They don’t care about my family or what this entails. They are just stirring.”
On Tuesday, former minister Simon Clarke, an ally of Liz Truss, claimed the Tories under Sunak were facing an electoral ‘bloodbath’. The latest upheaval for the Tory leader was caused by the poll that put his party on course for a 1997-style defeat.
At the same time, Tory peer David Frost argued that the party would “lose badly unless we do something about it”. He was named as a contact for the YouGov investigation, but it was commissioned by a mysterious group calling itself the Conservative Britain Alliance.
Lord Frost is said to have been warned by Nicholas True, the Conservative whip in the Lords, that he could have the Tory whip withdrawn if the donors behind the group had given money to Nigel Farage’s Reform Party. Frost has declined to give names.
Sources at Tory headquarters said Frost hoped to be selected for Basildon and Billericay, the party’s 35th safest seat, but doubted he would be admitted. “It’s very hard to see how he would run for office,” said one.