by Kemi Badenoch is a member of a Conservative WhatsApp group called “Evil Plotters” despite telling party rebels to “stop playing around” and back Rishi Sunak, the Guardian can reveal.
The business secretary, who consistently comes out as the favorite cabinet minister in Tory member polls, has criticized her party colleagues for “encouraging” suggestions that she could replace the prime minister.
In a round of broadcast interviews on Sunday, she rejected speculation about the story to tackle Sunak as “Westminster tittle-tattle” and colleagues who put her name forward said they were “not my friends”.
However, the Guardian has been told that Badenoch and Michael Gove, the level-up secretary, who are believed to be key supporters, are members of a WhatsApp group of like-minded Tory MPs who are facing the long-term ambitions of the business secretary.
Tory sources said that while Badenoch was not actively planning to remove Sunak before the next election, her staff were ready to “take action” if the prime minister was forced out, or if he resigned as party leader after winning the election.
Speculation has swirled at Westminster after a group of anonymous Tory donors funded a poll that suggested Sunak was leading his party to electoral oblivion at the next election, prompting speculation about who could be behind a plot. Badenoch has no praise.
However, the Guardian understands that when Suella Braverman was sacked as home secretary two months ago, some of her Baden allies advised her to lay low and wait for the conflict to progress before she emerged as The “reasonable face” of the Tory right. .
“Kemi will not try to dispossess Rishi herself, she knows that the hand that wields the knife never wears the crown,” said a Tory insider. “But she’s finally got a campaign ready.”
One friend of Badenoch’s suggested that while she had not specifically instructed her allies to plan and prepare a leadership campaign, she had given them the nod to continue. “It will be by her permission rather than at his command,” they said.
“She won’t have meetings with people saying”: ‘When are we setting up the phone banks?’ She won’t be doing what Penny Mordaunt is doing, little parties, little drinks, stealing people’s minds. She hates that.”
Tory MPs say Badenoch remains close to Gove, despite reports last year that the pair had fallen out, and have re-established a working relationship and speak regularly.
In recent weeks they have also messaged the WhatsApp group Evil Plotters, perhaps an ironic nod to former cabinet minister Nadine Dorries’ book The Plot, which claimed Gove was trying to install Badenoch as leader, which he denied allies of both parts.
The business secretary also regularly lunches with her key MP supporters, including housing minister Lee Rowley, digital minister Julia Lopez, Cabinet Office minister Alex Burghart, and Tory deputy chairwoman Rachel Maclean.
They were among the MPs who supported her during the Tory leadership contest to take over from Boris Johnson, when she made the final four. Rowley, who was campaign manager for Badenoch in 2022, is said to have continued unofficially in the role.
James Roberts, the former head of the Taxpayers’ Alliance who ran Badenoch’s list of endorsements in 2022, joined his team as a special adviser in June 2023, with sources suggesting he is “still working on leadership stuff” despite his official role.
A spokesman for Badenoch did not deny the WhatsApp group’s claim but said: “This is exactly the sort of agitation Kemi was referring to when she told people to stop playing around on Sunday.
“Having lunch, talking to MPs, and having a special parliamentary adviser is not a deal, it’s the day-to-day work of being secretary of state. This nonsense is clearly part of a targeted campaign against Kemi and should be treated as such by anyone reading it.”
On a tour of the broadcasting studios on Sunday, Badenoch did not deny that there were ambitions for the top job, telling the BBC: “If you had asked me two years ago in January 2022 I would have laughed it off and said it was an absolute there was crazy idea.
“You never know these things until you’re in the moment. What I would remind people is that after Liz Truss left, I stood up and said I’m not running again; Rishi is the one who should do the job. I did so because I worked with him [at] the Treasury, I knew he had a hand in the economy.”
She added that speculation among her Tory colleagues about her ambitions was a “total distraction”, telling Sky News: “They need to stop playing around and back the leader.
“The reality is that most people in the country are not interested in all these titles from Westminster. In fact, the people who put my name in are not always friends. It doesn’t matter to me. They don’t care about my family or what this would mean. They are just stirring.”
On Tuesday, former cabinet minister Simon Clarke, an ally of Liz Truss, claimed the Tories faced an electoral “massacre” under Sunak. The latest upset for the Tory leader was prompted by the poll which put his party on course for a 1997-style collapse.
At the same time, Tory peer David Frost insisted that the party will lose and lose badly if we don’t do something about it”. He was named as a contact on the YouGov research, but was commissioned by a mysterious group calling itself the British Conservative Alliance.
Nicholas True, the Conservative whip in the Lords, is understood to have warned Lord Frost that he could withdraw the Tory shepherd if the donors behind the group had given money to Nigel Farage’s Reform party. Frost declined to provide names.
Sources at Tory headquarters said Frost was hoping to be selected for Basildon and Billericay, the party’s 35th safest seat, but raised doubts about whether he would be allowed. “It’s very hard to see how he would stand as a candidate,” said one.
