Stephen Pollard responds Reform UK's attacks on Kemi Badenoch

Journalist Stephen Pollard has published on X here and in the Spectator here a response to the smears which Reform UK has been putting round against Kemi Badenoch.

I think it is worth republishing here.

Zia Yusuf’s attack on Kemi Badenoch shows he is a hypocrite

I’m usually resistant to the sentiment behind one of the oldest political jokes: How can you tell when a politician is lying? His lips move. In my experience – I’ve been in and around Westminster for nearly four decades – most politicians might have large egos but they are genuinely trying to do their best for their country. The idea that all politicians lie with impunity is corrosive and wrong. But it’s not always easy to make that case. And the wilful, brazen smearing of Kemi Badenoch by Reform over her reaction to the murder of Henry Nowak is one such example of that difficulty.

Yusuf’s hypocrisy would be laughable if the issue at the heart of all this – the murder of a young man – was not so tragic

Speaking on yesterday’s Good Morning Britain, the Conservative leader set out her admirable approach: “I don’t want to hear about Black Lives Matter. I don’t want to hear about White Lives Matter. We all matter. Enough of this nonsense…”

Her comments were immediately used in an attack ad by Reform, taking her phrase “I don’t want to hear about White Lives Matter” and contrasting it with words she used in 2020: “Black lives do matter”. The intention is clear: look at this black woman, who doesn’t give a damn about whites and cares only about blacks.

As I say, I’ve been around the block a bit, but in all those decades I’ve never come across a distortion as wilful, clear and grotesque as this. Both phrases lifted by Reform are not so much taken out of context as handed entirely the opposite meaning.

Take yesterday’s comment. Badenoch could not have been clearer that we shouldn’t separate black and white lives and that this form of identity politics is wrong. To take from her interview the idea that she doesn’t care about white lives is a distortion so great that it speaks volumes only about the morals of those behind it.

The same is true of the use of her 2020 phrase, “Black lives do matter”. Of course she thinks they matter. She thinks, obviously, that all lives matter equally. It’s the position Badenoch has been known for since she first entered public consciousness as Equalities Minister with a startlingly good speech in the Commons in 2020:

“I want to speak about a dangerous trend in race relations that has come far too close to home in my life, which is the promotion of Critical Race Theory, an ideology that sees my blackness as victimhood and their whiteness as oppression … Of course black lives matter, but we know that the Black Lives Matter movement is political. I know that because, at the height of the protests, I have been told of Black Lives Matter protesters calling a black armed police officer guarding Downing Street — I apologise for saying this word — “a pet ni***r” … Lots of pernicious stuff is being pushed, and we stand against that.

We do not want teachers to teach their white pupils about white privilege and inherited racial guilt. Let me be clear that any school that teaches those elements of Critical Race Theory as fact, or that promotes partisan political views such as defunding the police without offering a balanced treatment of opposing views, is breaking the law.”

Reform’s home affairs spokesman, Zia Yusuf, has been determinedly pushing this attack line about Badenoch since the party decided yesterday that it would lie about her views. Yusuf, it transpires, is not merely pushing a deliberate distortion of her views. He is also a monumental hypocrite.

Just after 3pm yesterday he tweeted the Reform attack line:

“Kemi Badenoch in 2020: “Black Lives Do Matter” Kemi Badenoch in 2026: “I don’t want to hear about white lives matter” Disgraceful.”

But just one hour later, he tweeted this:

“Disgusting from the Telegraph. Nigel Farage said that “white lives matter just as much as black lives”. To shorten a sentence like that is journalistic malpractice and deliberately misleading. Would expect nothing less from the Torygraph.”

Yusuf’s hypocrisy would be laughable if the issue at the heart of all this – the murder of a young man – was not so tragic and so important. 

Within minutes of his only using part of what Badenoch said in order to distort her words so that they appear to mean the opposite of what she actually said, Yusuf then accused a newspaper of “journalistic malpractice” which is “deliberately misleading” for using only part of what his party leader said so that they appear to mean the opposite of what he actually said. The hypocrisy is mind blowing.

Distortion of Badenoch’s words appears to be endemic within Reform. The party’s self-styled shadow chancellor, Robert Jenrick, joined in with this: 

“Kemi Badenoch: “I don’t want to hear” white lives matter. 

Keir Starmer: “There’s no such thing as two-tier policing”. Never have politicians been so out of touch with the people they’re paid to represent.”

Jenrick’s decision to pretend that Badenoch meant the opposite of what she actually said is especially interesting, given his transformation from supporting the England football team’s decision to take the knee – the symbol of support for the Black Lives Matter movement – at the 2022 World Cup.

“I’m fine with that,” he told Sky News. “I think that’s a choice for Harry Kane and the team, and indeed for Wales as well. These are their choices, it’s not for the government to tell them what to do. And I think when you’re playing in a country like Qatar, which does have different standards in the way it treats, for example, the LGBTQ community, it’s perfectly legitimate for the England or the Welsh team to make that stand.”

Then again, when you are up against a politician like Kemi Badenoch, whose career has been built on principle and clarity, it’s understandable why a politician whose only principle is his own career would resort to distortion and hypocrisy.