Is Kemi Badenoch’s only ambition to prove she’s not ‘woke’?
The Tory leader has spent her week defending a convicted neo-Nazi who planned to run as a party councillor. Why has she dug her heels in so deep?
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What’s the story?
It's been a strange week for Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who has found herself defending a former neo-Nazi who stood to become a Tory councillor in Somerset.
Joshua Bonehill-Paine has convictions for racial harassment of Jewish former MP Luciana Berger, and has served jail time for sharing antisemitic content online.
Badenoch has said she "believes in second chances". He has now stood down, but has instead been offered a role as an anti-extremism advisor to the Tories.
Badenoch has dug her heels in deep – but why?
"She's got it in her head that political strength is to never retreat, never to have doubt – and that's why she's such an online figure. She really is a figure for the X/Twitter age," says Lewis Goodall.
"She's someone who expresses herself in 280 characters, and sees nuance as a weakness.
"She's made to be amplified, She's a perfect example of a ‘content politician’ on the rise."
He says more "supple" politicians would have taken one look at the situation – spending a week defending a man convicted of vile crimes – and despite seeing the importance of rehabilitation, would have turned away from this immediately.
"This really isn't a fight worth having, but that's not how Badenoch sees it," Lewis adds.
"She sees it through clear, cold lines of logic, and that everything is like a tweet.
"She's seeing this as an opportunity to show the online right that she's not going to get bashed around by 'the libs', or the 'wokerati'."
But this approach, he says, leads down a path of self-radicalisation.
"At the same time she is imposing litmus tests on her party for people being able to stand on the basis of certain beliefs that they may have about the ECHR or about Net Zero and so on.
"That is a quite uncomfortable dual thing to be doing at the same time."