Eurosceptic Tories turning on Kemi Badenoch over climbdown on EU laws

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Eurosceptic Tories are turning on Kemi Badenoch over her climbdown on doing away with laws from Brussels

  • Furious MPs have called Kemi Badenoch ‘arrogant’ and ‘lazy’ in her performance
  • One claimed the Business Secretary, 43, was ‘never’ in her Saffron Walden seat  

Kemi Badenoch’s climbdown on axeing EU law sparked a withering backlash from Eurosceptic Tories over everything from her ‘arrogant’ demeanour to her ‘lazy’ performance as a local MP.

One furious Tory MP said the Business Secretary was ‘never’ in her Saffron Walden seat and had a ‘dreadful reputation locally’.

Another Tory fumed that after her ‘comical car crash’ last week – with a blistering rebuke from the Commons Speaker – she had ‘blown up’ her leadership credentials.

There were suggestions – denied by No 10 – that she had been set up by Downing Street in an attempt to ‘scotch her leadership hopes’.

One furious Tory MP said the Business Secretary was ‘never’ in her Saffron Walden seat and had a ‘dreadful reputation locally’

Her allies hit back last night, with Tory MP Miriam Cates calling Mrs Badenoch, 43, ‘one of our bravest and most able Ministers’.

READ MORE: From ‘nuts may contain nuts’ to the ban on butchers giving dogs a bone… These are the bizarre EU diktats we’ll be stuck with after Kemi Badenoch’s U-turn that was branded as ‘absurd’ 

But her allies hit back last night, with Tory MP Miriam Cates calling Mrs Badenoch, 43, ‘one of our bravest and most able Ministers’.

Yet one ex-Minister privately tore into her record as an MP in Essex since 2017, saying she was ‘lazy, was never there and local members describe her as arrogant, rude and contemptuous’.

Another Tory ex-Minister said she was ‘supercilious, condescending, lofty and disdainful’.

But a friend of Mrs Badenoch’s said: ‘Kemi is Business Secretary, International Trade Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities. 

‘She is doing the job of three Cabinet Ministers and the idea that she is ‘lazy’ is a disgusting trope by those who know that she will never do their bidding.’

Her constituency association chairman Howard Rolfe dismissed the attacks on her as ‘fabrication’.

He denied she treated councillors with disdain and said: ‘Kemi has a house in the constituency and is there whenever she can be at weekends and in school holidays.’

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