Kemi Badenoch has warned Britain is heading for a “summer of chaos” if Andy Burnham does not delay the parliamentary recess, come to the Commons and set out his plan for the country. Which is certainly one way of playing it.
The Conservative leader gave a speech on Monday attacking Burnham as Labour’s leadership transition gathered pace, arguing the country could not drift through the summer with Keir Starmer still nominally in Downing Street while Burnham was already being treated as Prime Minister-in-waiting. Britain had “a caretaker prime minister, barely in office, definitely not in power,” she said, claiming major decisions had been put on hold while Labour worked out what came next.
Her argument was that Burnham should not become Prime Minister and then disappear into the summer recess before facing MPs. The Commons is currently due to rise on 16 July, with Burnham expected to be confirmed as Labour leader shortly afterwards if he remains unopposed. Badenoch said he should delay the recess “by just a day or two,” come to Parliament, and explain what he intends to do. “This is not a game,” she said. “It should not be a soap opera. If he wants to be the leader of our country, it is time to start acting like it.”
A serious point, buried in a difficult frame
As a line of attack, there is a genuine point buried in there. Britain is in the middle of a highly unusual transfer of power. Starmer has announced he is stepping down, Burnham is widely expected to replace him, and the government is still making decisions in the meantime. Labour’s NEC has set a leadership timetable that could see Burnham become Prime Minister in mid-July if he secures the required nominations and no contest takes place.
But the problem for Badenoch is that the moment she said “summer of chaos,” the internet remembered who had been running the country for most of the previous decade and a half.
The Conservatives were in government from 2010 until Labour’s 2024 general election victory. That stretch took in David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak before Labour returned to power with 411 seats, leaving the Conservatives with just 121, their lowest seat total in modern history.
The receipts
This was the party of the Brexit referendum aftermath, Theresa May’s zombie premiership, Boris Johnson’s unlawful prorogation of Parliament, Liz Truss’s market-melting mini-budget, and Rishi Sunak’s rain-soaked election announcement. The UK Supreme Court held that Parliament had been unlawfully prorogued in September 2019, after Johnson’s government tried to suspend it for what would have been the longest prorogation in modern times, a suspension that would have prevented MPs from carrying out normal scrutiny activity.
Liz Truss’s premiership lasted 49 days, the shortest in British history, and became so chaotic that a Daily Star livestream of a lettuce outlasting her was later acquired by the British Film Institute’s National Archive as part of the official record of British political absurdity. Reform’s current plan to scrap renewable energy contracts has already been warned could trigger Truss-style chaos by an industry chief, a reminder that the word “Truss” still functions as political shorthand for market panic a decade on.
On the economy, the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ verdict on the 2010-24 period was not gentle. Average earnings growth had been “dreadful,” GDP per head was nearly £11,000 lower than it would have been if pre-financial crisis trends had continued, and low investment, policy mistakes, political instability and Brexit had all helped hold back growth.
That was the context in which Badenoch warned of chaos.
What Burnham actually said
Burnham, for his part, used his first major policy speech since returning to Westminster to set out a devolution-heavy agenda. The speech included a proposed “No 10 North” in Manchester, a major council housebuilding programme, stronger public control over utilities and a promise to rebalance power away from Westminster, with Burnham declaring “the days of Whitehall blocking devolution are over for good.” He also committed to Labour’s existing fiscal rules, promising “sound public finances” and saying his plans were consistent with Labour’s 2024 manifesto, a commitment that markets responded to calmly, with gilt yields dipping and the pound rising after the speech.
Badenoch dismissed that agenda as “more public control, more regulation, more taxes,” and said Burnham’s plans were based on the “mistaken belief” that government creates growth rather than business. It is a fair enough dividing line for a Conservative leader to draw. The odd bit was the attempt to frame the danger as political chaos, given the recent history of the Conservative Party and the internet’s continued ability to remember things that happened more than five minutes ago.
The response
The response was swift:
Equilan (@Equilan): “The conservatives lecturing us about government chaos because we’re about to have a new PM when they had 5 changes in a short time and one lasted less time than a lettuce.”
GET A GRIP (@docrussjackson): “We suffered FIFTEEN FUCKING YEARS of chaos under her party.”
dave lawrence (@dave43law): “Pretty dumb – he is not a candidate yet. You said he wants 3 months holiday yet earliest he can be appointed is July 20th and Parliament returns Sept 1st – if there is a contest that does not conclude until the end of August.”
petefeg (@petefeg): “Wait till she hears about Boris Johnson and Liz Lettuce 😉”
James D Magee (@jamesdavidmagee): “Sorry Kemi, your party destroyed the UK with Cronyism, Corruption & a cataclysmic Brexit! Your parties inept management further added a £Trillion to the National debt, defunded the NHS and the Police, not to mention the catastrophic damage your predecessors did…”
Bread Pit (@Sarcoph09595816): “I’d be far more terrified of an incoming Tory administration after that 14 year clusterfuck.”
Ian Robinson (@IanARobinson): “From the party that prorogued parliament 😂😂😂”
Stop The Bollocks with Mirabel (@MirabelTweets1): “The only people who are going to cause a summer of chaos is you, Farage, Lowe & your merry band of Nazis like Tommy Ten Names Grifting Twat Robinson.”
John Socks (@socksjf): “The Tories have no business lecturing anyone else on a ‘summer of chaos’ after 2016, 2019 and 2022. Starmer might have been a failed PM, but at least he didn’t require 60 resignations to go and then spend his last weeks on holiday as if he didn’t also have one booked afterwards.”
Geoff Wright (@GeoffWright3712): “What chaos? The Country is still being run. Courts are still running. The civil service is still running. NATO summit etc. Irrational comment.”
This was not Badenoch’s first uncomfortable week. She has already had a viral Commons moment with Streeting that earned a Nicki Minaj endorsement, been accused of “gutter politics” over a “400 knives” PMQs attack, and faced criticism over her stance on the Macpherson report and stop and search. The chaos framing adds to a week where her messaging has repeatedly run into the same problem: strong individual lines that don’t survive contact with the wider political record.
The difficulty for Badenoch
There is an argument to be made that Burnham should face Parliament before MPs leave for the summer. There is also an argument that Labour should provide far more detail on how his programme would be funded, especially with defence spending already creating fresh pressure for the next chancellor, with almost £5bn still needing to be found over four years to fund the rest of the Defence Investment Plan.
But politics is not only about whether an argument can be made. It is also about whether the person making it can do so without half the country bursting out laughing. The Conservatives spent years insisting Britain needed stability while changing leaders repeatedly, warning about fiscal responsibility after Truss, warning about constitutional seriousness after Johnson, warning about competence after the 2024 election left them reduced to a rump opposition.
So yes, Badenoch can say Burnham should come to Parliament. She can say the transition needs scrutiny. She can say Labour is trying to glide through the summer without answering hard questions. What she cannot do quite so easily is say “chaos” and expect people not to remember the last time her party had the keys. And judging by the replies, they remembered plenty.
Leave a Reply