radiofree.asia

Kemi ‘no gaffes’ Badenoch has once again gaffed on national TV

The Conservative Party – remember them? Perhaps not; mostly because their leader Kemi Badenoch is so remarkably gaffe-free that the media has little reason to report on them. That’s certainly what we heard from the woman herself, anyway, and we’ve no reason to doubt it.

Or we didn’t:

Kemi Badenoch says what?

The north of Ireland (a.k.a. ‘Northern Ireland’) quite famously voted to remain. In fact, it caused something of a years’ long crisis in British politics which successive governments failed to resolve to everyone’s satisfaction.

In the video above, Badenoch claims the ‘last time she checked, Northern Ireland did vote to leave’. When the interviewer points out this is incorrect, Badenoch notes that Scotland voted to remain; that England and Wales didn’t, and that overall the United Kingdom voted to leave. She doesn’t acknowledge her gaffe, but technically it’s a gaffe whether she admits to it or not.

Could it be that the north of Ireland did vote to leave the ‘last time she checked’, and that they subsequently voted to remain?

It couldn’t, no, as we only ever had the one vote on Brexit.

You could count the 2019 election as a proxy referendum, but even if you do, it saw a swing towards parties which opposed Brexit in the north of Ireland, so that wouldn’t make sense either.

It’s actually a little difficult to work out when Badenoch claimed not to make gaffes, because you get many examples like the following when you search for it:

Thankfully, the Guardian got to the bottom of it, reporting in February this year:

Badenoch has previously said she does not make gaffes, telling the Chopper’s Politics podcast last September: “I never have gaffes, or apologising for something that I said, [saying] ‘oh that’s not what I meant’, I never have to clarify, because I think very carefully about what I say.”

That same article was titled Labour attacks Badenoch ‘shambles’ after breach of corporate rules, reporting:

Badenoch, a former business secretary, became Conservative leader on 2 November but her predecessor Rishi Sunak was still registered as the controller of the party’s companies until the party was notified of the error last week.

Companies House states that it must be notified of any change in a company’s person of significant control within 14 days of the transfer.

The Conservatives filed an update to say Badenoch was a person of significant control on 30 January – the day the error was drawn to their attention by Labour.

Looks like she’s not the only one gaffing over there.

Nothing to see here

In other news from planet Badenoch:


Arguably, this is her biggest gaffe of all, given the monumental threat climate change poses to the UK – threats you can read more about here:

You can also follow the Canary for more news on the north of Ireland, including the latest on whether they voted to leave or not.

Featured image via BBC 

By Willem Moore

This post was originally published on Canary.