Kemi Badenoch organised Suella Braverman's hen night, so get ready if she wins Tory leadership

Just about every stand-up comedian in Edinburgh right now must be cursing the Conservative government for that surprise election call – with the inevitable thrashing at the polls rendering some of their best gags out of date. But hang on. Funsters, all hope may not be lost.

The Tories, even in these dark days of opposition, are still the party which keeps on giving. And surely there’s mirth potential in this: Suella Braverman’s hen night was masterminded by… Kemi Badenoch. That’s right. The favourite for the party leadership was, presumably, in charge of organising the giant risqué inflatable for a woman who until the other day was one of her chief rivals, Braverman deciding to opt out of the race this time around.

Tragically, I’ve searched for juicy details about the then Home Secretary’s hooley and found none. Hello! magazine can tell me about the marriage ceremony back in 2018 – “The bride looked stunning in the strapless white wedding dress with embellished detailing around the waist… ” – but there was no embellished detailing around what happened at the event signifying the end of Braverman’s singledom.

Tory men love a strong woman and Kemi Badenoch is certainly that (Picture: Carl Court/Getty Images)

No matter. We can invent some more embellishments of our own. Such as: “Girlfriend!” squeals Braverman, to which Badenoch’s response is: “Yo, girlfriend!” They’re in a Weatherspoons or similar wind-tunnel chain pub. Braverman sports pink Playboy Bunny ears with an L-plate pinned on her sparkly dress. Braverman, in a “Team Suella” T-shirt, has stuck said inflatable between her legs to hand round similarly shaped drinking straws. The cocktails sloosh for a squawky rendition of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”.

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“Team Suella” move outside, or rather are invited to leave by the thick-necked security. Some are hirpling from paintball direct hits earlier in the day, the ones obliged to wear cardboard masks of those Conservatives who do not share the hardline ideals of the bride-to-be and her party planner. Braverman and Badenoch link arms to steady themselves as they totter on high heels.

They are looking for the nightclub; it’s around here somewhere. But almost the whole town centre is boarded up and abandoned. The would-be Tory sister-saviours sit down on the pavement and between burps Badenoch wonders: “Bloody hell, did we bring about all of this?”

Or something like that. And I didn’t even speculate on stripper antics. Braverman might live to fight for the leadership another day but for Badenoch the contest is right now and everything we read about her suggests she’s well-equipped for a scrap. “Feisty, abrasive, volatile, aggressive, antagonistic” say the kind of frenemies who contribute anonymously to rush-release political biogs. From Scotland comes the endorsement of Andrew Bowie, Westminster’s Shadow Veterans Minister who’s in awe of her tough-cookie persona and admits he would “never question” her judgment.

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Ach, these Tory men – they love strong, forceful women and have no issue with them being stronger and more forceful than they are. If they don’t want a dominatrix then there’s a definite yearning for Margaret Thatcher 2.0. Bowie is touting Kemi Badenochayethenoo as Rishi Sunak’s successor. He cannot, however, advance the case for her with blind adoration. Which politician doesn’t need questioning, most of the time? And the civil servants who’ve been accusing her of “bullying” would agree with that.

Badenoch, who was born in the UK to Nigerian parents, has claimed, with the inference that this was because of the colour of her skin, her school advised not to apply for Oxford, although this is disputed by one of her teachers.

Another anecdote that may have been embellished – perhaps not to the extent of my hen night scenario – concerned the middle-aged woman who heckled David Cameron in 2006 and then, as she was leaving the venue of the then Tory leader’s speech, allegedly slapped Badenoch, not yet an MP. Rather than report this, the bold Kemi gave chase. The woman “got to the top of the stairs,” Badenoch recalled, “and I caught her by the hair and pulled her back. Then I realised the whole room had gone silent.”

Badenoch was partly politicised by the “stupid lefty white kids” she encountered at uni. Right now, though, she’s been criticised for insufficient condemnation of the stupid, righty, looting, police-bashing white kids involved in the summer of riots.

Another significant irritant on her journey was Bob Geldof whose Live Aid charity concerts she deemed patronising towards Africans. She would meet Geldof later, describing him as “rude”. Yes, but that bullishness – one of her own characteristics – made Live Aid and its follow-ups happen, alerting the world to the famine emergency. Oh, and Geldof also got Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and Dave Gilmour to share a stage without throttling each other, a stunning diplomatic breakthrough of which any politician would be envious.

To win hearts and minds in her party and bring round sceptics, Badenoch seems to have been on a charm offensive, at least compared with her usual schtick. She surprised and amused in the Commons by welcoming Angela Rayner to the tricky task of solving the housing shortage. Badenoch, now shadowing her, remarked that they had a few things in common – both “feisty”, born in 1980 but looking younger, thanks to “great skin and good hair” – before claiming Rayner had been “stitched up” by Keir Starmer by being set impossible targets.

Time will tell if Badenoch’s target proves out of reach. “Kemi means drama,” reckons one Tory voice who thinks it will. To those of us worried her party’s election disaster would usher in a dull era, however, she makes for lively copy.

Fools are not suffered, nor were her rival candidates for MP selection when they wanted to small-talk while awaiting the verdict which would launch Badenoch. She opted to remain under her headphones listening to “Simply the Best” and “Eye of the Tiger”. And who knows, maybe some suitably riotous choons for the hen party playlist.