Yesterday, June 6, 2023, was the 79th anniversary of D-Day.

Along with many others, I hope that the centenarians who commemorated the event this year will be alive to see the 80th anniversary in 2024.

Lest we forget:

Meanwhile, in Parliament, the EU Scrutiny Select Committee, headed by Conservative MP Bill Cash finally managed to get Kemi Badenoch, the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, in for a session to discuss the Retained EU Law (REUL) Bill which she has watered down beyond belief. It took five invitations.

The Spectator has an excellent summary of what happened from last summer to the present:

Some vintage blue-on-blue today over at the European Scrutiny Committee (ESC). Kemi Badenoch, the Business and Trade Secretary, was up before MPs to face a grilling on her department’s Retained EU Law (REUL) bill. The legislation was introduced under Liz Truss when Jacob Rees-Mogg was Business Secretary, with the aim of removing all EU legislation from the UK by the end of 2023.

The REUL passed the House of Commons without amendments and went to the House of Lords, where Badenoch agreed single-handedly to adopt an amendment from the peers, who are massively pro-EU — even among the Conservatives:

Badenoch though has championed a different approach: ditching the sunset element from the bill after it went through the House of Commons. Her department has instead provided parliament with a list of all REUL that the government intends to repeal.

The list amounts to 600 laws instead of 2,400 which were to have been examined.

Incidentally, when Rishi Sunak was running against Liz Truss for the Conservative Party leadership last summer, he, too, promised a bonfire of EU laws. This was his campaign video on the subject:

Badenoch’s independent move to look at only 600 laws has not pleased those who voted Leave on June 23, 2016:

Some, like ESC chairman Bill Cash, have claimed this amounts to a ‘betrayal’ of Brexit.

Indeed, it is a betrayal.

In her defence, Badenoch told Cash’s committee (emphases mine):

I’m not an arsonist, I’m a Conservative. I don’t think a bonfire of regulations is what we wanted. What we wanted was reform and removal of the things we didn’t need.

I, for one, am among the millions who wanted — and still want — a bonfire of regulations. In many cases, British law guarantees more workers’ rights — holiday, maternity leave — than EU laws do. The same goes for animal welfare and food production.

As such, it was difficult to disagree with another member of the committee, Conservative MP David Jones who took Badenoch on directly:

David Jones said the following to Badenoch:

What I’m finding difficult to understand is that when a bill passes through the House of Commons unamended and therefore has the complete approbation of the House of Commons, you then change your approach completely. You don’t tell the Commons that you’re changing your approach. You don’t have the courtesy to come before this committee so that this committee can scrutinise the changes that you’re proposing. And then you come back to the Commons, it having gone through the Lords, presenting the Commons effectively with a fait accompli. Don’t think that’s disrespectful of the House of Commons?

Badenoch fired back that she had met privately with Jones on several occasions to discuss the matter:

Something you’re not saying is that we had private meetings, David, we had private meetings where we discussed this extensively because I knew you had concerns and it’s public knowledge that we had private meetings, because when I thought I was having private and confidential meetings, I was reading the contents in the Daily Telegraph so with respect I would like to dispute quite a lot of what you said.

Guido Fawkes has the video clip:

The Telegraph‘s Tim Stanley has more:

Students of history will recall that one of the supposed benefits of Brexit was a “bonfire” of EU laws but, four months into being appointed head of business and trade, Kemi called the burning off – to the outrage of the European scrutiny committee …

David Jones clearly thought Kemi was insulting democracy itself. Leaning forward on the desk, arms crossed, the inquisitor noted that the original bonfire Bill passed through the Commons “unamended”. So why did she change it? 

Are you saying legislation should never be altered? she replied with a withering smile. He called her “disrespectful” for ignoring five invitations to speak to them; she said there was no point when she had only just started her job …

Stanley points out that the Kemi we thought we knew from last summer’s failed Party leadership race is not that same Kemi:

Kemi is often called the next Mrs Thatcher if only on the grounds that she, too, is absolutely terrifying. Philosophically, however, she has revealed different colours.

Some members of the committee asked her if the Prime Minister had requested that she scale back the REUL, particularly in light of the watery Windsor Framework he signed with the EU earlier this year. She said:

the idea was entirely her own and she had to persuade him …

The session is 90 minutes long and can be found on parliamentlive.tv.

To be fair to Badenoch, the committee missed a few opportunities between her appointment and the present day. Cash said that there are archives of EU directives in detail dating from 1973. Badenoch was unaware of that. Cash said that the archives could help her decide what further laws to repeal for the UK or retain, with a parliamentary debate where applicable.

Another was her inability because of her international travel schedule to meet with the committee more regularly. Cash suggested that she appoint a ‘czar’ to meet with them and discuss the process in more detail. She flippantly suggested that Cash, 83 (!), take on that role. He gently demurred, saying he was already in a ‘czar’ role as head of the committee.

Having watched the proceedings in full, Badenoch came off as arrogant and condescending.

She began by saying that only she could take on this ‘process’ of repealing 600 EU laws because, unlike everyone else, she was an ‘engineer’ who had worked in IT. No one else was qualified, in her opinion.

At one point, when committee members questioned her process, she crisply replied that they would ‘just have to trust’ her. Only she had the right approach.

Her body language showed a certain defensiveness: tightly crossed arms, suggesting that she might be hiding something. If I were doing job interviews and had a candidate doing that, I would reject them.

She assured the committee that her process would be complete ‘before the end of the year’ and that other laws could then be examined similarly.

Hmm. I wonder.

As for Cash’s suggestion about appointing a ‘czar’ to help her and liaise with the committee, she said she would look at the idea but it seemed clear to me that she was not interested.

That evening, Nigel Farage and Conservative MP John Redwood also criticised Badenoch’s watered-down approach:

It’s all terribly disappointing.

In addition to her Secretary of State for Business and Trade role, Badenoch still serves as Equalities Minister, where she has voiced common sense, particularly with regard to education. In June 2021, she dismissed the idea of teaching about ‘white privilege’, drawing on her youth spent in Nigeria. The Mail reported:

Mrs Badenoch said: ‘As someone who grew up in Nigeria, where there is only one skin colour but over 300 ethnic groups, the more ethnic identity is emphasised the weaker national identity becomes.’

She said it is a dangerous trend for a multi-racial society ‘where we need to lean on what we have in common not emphasise our differences’.

The Conservative minister claimed Labour MPs dismiss that the idea that the term is divisive. 

And she revealed she has heard hundreds of stories of increased racialiasation in schools in her role as equalities minister, including one in which a mixed-race Asian girl was bullied for being ‘too white’.

She displayed further common sense in July 2022 when she laid out her stall for the Conservative leadership race, emphasising that freedom relies on people telling the truth, which she pledged to do:

That day, someone found that Badenoch voted for vaccine passports. First bad sign.

That said, the good still outweighed the bad.

Lee Anderson was among those sensible MPs who backed Kemi last summer:

Dr Caroline Johnson, a physician, was another:

Then, Michael Gove — someone I have not trusted for several years — backed Kemi. Possibly because she once served on his ministerial team?

I did not know that Kemi backed Gove for Party leader in 2019. That says a lot, none of which is good.

On another historical note, The Telegraph has a 2017 photo of her husband Hamish. The two met in 2009 at an event in South London at the Dulwich and West Norwood Conservative Club. He helped her campaign when she contested that seat against Labour in 2010 but lost. The two married in 2012 and have three children. Hamish, who was at one time a Conservative councillor in Merton, also wanted to be an MP but Kemi took his name off the candidates list for Saffron Walden, which she has represented in Parliament since 2017, because she became vice-chairman of the Party’s candidates. She thought that keeping him on the list would be a conflict of interest. A Cambridge graduate, Hamish works at Deutsche Bank. He is the global head of the company’s future of work and real estate division.

On July 12, Kemi had a veiled go at Boris over his economy with the truth about his pandemic get-togethers:

Kemi made much of her engineering background:

Even ITV’s Robert Peston, son of a Labour peer, found her speech impressive:

The Sun‘s political editor Harry Cole gave her a good write-up:

The Sun on Sunday‘s political editor, Kate Ferguson, said that Team Kemi had the necessary number of MPs to move formally into the leadership race:

By July 13, some conservatives thought she sounded like Margaret Thatcher. The Spectator‘s Rod Liddle thought that Kemi was the only one able to beat Labour in a general election:

Badenoch’s views thrilled a portion of the nation. Suella Braverman, another candidate with refreshing views, was eliminated from the race, giving Badenoch a further boost as one of the five final candidates.

This was important, because the next PM — Liz Truss, as it turned out — would be elected by Conservative Party members after MPs’ votes decided the final two candidates.

By July 16, Badenoch was campaigning for change in the form of less government interference and, eventually, lower taxes. The following day, she wrote that Labour were ‘still living in the past on race’.

Conservatives saw a video of her in Parliament taking on SNP MP Alison Thewliss on socio-political issues:

At that point, she was doing so well that she was the top candidate among Conservative Home readers. Liz Truss was in second place, and Rishi Sunak was in fourth. Penny Mordaunt was third. However, according to the bookies, Badenoch was in fourth place, with Sunak in first, Truss in second and Mordaunt in third.

By the third week in July, either The Spectator or Hamish Badenoch was hopeful, because he wrote an article for the magazine, ‘My life as a political spouse’, as if he were about to become the next Denis Thatcher.

One week later, and it was all over. It was Liz v Rishi. However, one poll showed that, out of all the Conservatives that had had senior positions, Kemi scored highest on people’s wish list for the new Cabinet:

Note who is at the bottom of the list: Jeremy Hunt, current Chancellor.

Guido has more.

On August 12, Kemi said Liz is ‘a maverick’ who can get things done. She thought Rishi was too much of a ‘technocrat’.

Two weeks later, and Liz was in the lead over Rishi with regard to Conservative MPs’ votes. By the time Parliament resumed after summer recess, Conservative Party members had voted in Liz Truss.

On September 24, the Mail reported that Michael Gove was spotted having a meal with Kemi Badenoch at Fortnum and Mason’s restaurant earlier in the month. Hmm:

Supporters of Liz Truss fear that ex-Cabinet Minister Michael Gove is already plotting against the Prime Minister from the backbenches after he was spotted lunching with her leadership rival Kemi Badenoch at an exclusive restaurant in London’s West End.

Mrs Badenoch, the International Trade Secretary, has been viewed with suspicion by Truss supporters after she was seen sharing a meal at Fortnum & Mason’s restaurant with Mr Gove earlier this month.

The former Levelling Up Secretary backed Ms Truss’s rival Rishi Sunak in the leadership contest and dubbed her tax policies a ‘holiday from reality’ after it became clear Mr Gove would be banished to the backbenches if she won …

A source said of the ‘Fortnum’s plot’: ‘Michael is always up to something, he can’t help himself. Kemi should not allow herself to become his puppet.’

That was the only time I’d read about it, probably because Rishi became PM soon afterwards and put Gove back in charge of the Levelling Up department.

Badenoch was still concerned about wokery in government, so everything seemed normal. On December 22, she objected to the Scottish Parliament’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill and on January 9, 2023, appointed conservative thinkers Nikki Da Costa and Mercy Muroki as Policy Fellows in the Equalities Unit.

On February 8, she made much of her problem solving abilities on Sky News and criticised Remainers who said that Brexit turned out badly:

Guido noted (emphasis his):

Without realising it, Rishi’s mini-reshuffle has manoeuvred Kemi into the perfect position to fight the post-election Tory leadership race…

On March 30, she won reselection from the Saffron Walden Conservative Association for the next general election:

The next day, she had even bigger news, announcing that the UK had joined the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which also includes Canada and Mexico. The CPTPP, which is about trade only, is predicted to dwarf the EU in the years ahead:

On April 29, Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis wrote an article for The Telegraph, ‘I back Kemi Badenoch in her war on wokery’. He wrote that he had enjoyed meeting her and Foreign Secretary James Cleverly very much on his trip to London.

Then came the REUL controversy, which is where I started this post.

Having invited Badenoch three times to meet with the European Scrutiny select committee to no avail, Sir Bill Cash raised an Urgent Question in the Commons on Thursday, May 11. In desperation, he said it was the only way he could meet with her:

Hansard has the transcript.

As usual, someone leaked details of the revised revocation of EU law process to the media.

Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle was less than impressed:

Before we begin the urgent question, I note that it is highly regrettable that the Government decided not to offer an oral statement on this matter yesterday, given the importance of the announcement. On such matters, full engagement with Parliament and its Committees is essential. Before I call the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee, I remind the Government that we are elected to hear it first, not to hear it in The Telegraph, and a written ministerial statement is certainly not satisfactory for such an important matter.

Sir Bill Cash rose to speak:

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade if she will make a statement on her failure to come to the House before she made the written ministerial statement on the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill and the article today in The Telegraph?

It was clear that Badenoch did not want to be at the despatch box. She was defensive, flippant and arrogant — a huge departure from the woman we had been cheering on last year.

As soon as I heard her say this …

I am very sorry, Mr Speaker, that the sequencing that we chose was not to your satisfaction. I was—

… I knew the Speaker would explode.

Which he did:

Order. That is totally not acceptable—

She went on to complete her sentence:

It was not the right procedure.

She was so wrong. Why didn’t she just apologise?

Sir Lindsay Hoyle said:

Who do you think you are speaking to, Secretary of State? I think we need to understand each other. I am the defender of this House and these Benches on both sides. I am not going to be spoken to by a Secretary of State who is absolutely not accepting my ruling. Take it with good grace and accept it that Members should hear it first, not through a WMS or what you decide. These Members have been elected by their constituents and they have the right to hear it first. It is time this Government recognised that we are all elected—we are all Members of Parliament—and used the correct manners.

I know her response seems sincere in writing, but watching it, you’ll hear otherwise:

Mr Speaker, I apologise. What I was trying to say was that I am very sorry that I did not meet the standards that you expect of Secretaries of State. Forgive my language. I have been trying to make sure that I provide as much clarity as possible, so I am actually very pleased to have come to the House to speak on this issue.

This is why the British Parliament — both Houses — is the world’s best soap opera:

Badenoch then presented her 600-law process of elimination — ‘a new approach’ — following the amendment in the House of Lords:

I have published a written ministerial statement to explain that yesterday we tabled an amendment to the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill that amends the operation of the sunset in clause 1. It is a technical change that introduces to the Bill a schedule of retained EU law that will be revoked on 31 December 2023. The schedule includes around 600 pieces of legislation provided by nearly all Departments, and spans a huge number policy areas. We tabled the amendment in response to concerns raised in this House, and it will provide the legal clarity and certainty that has been called for.

I reassure my hon. Friend the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee that the 600 pieces of legislation in the schedule are not the limit of our ambition—neither the beginning nor the end—but over the past year, as Whitehall Departments have been working hard to identify retained EU law to preserve, reform or revoke, it has become clear that time constraints have led to the programme becoming more about preserving EU laws than prioritising meaningful reform. That is why we are proposing a new approach.

Then she said, somewhat sarcastically:

Had I known the intense excitement that the House would feel about this issue, I would have come running to make sure that the technical details could be investigated by all and sundry.

She made it sound like most EU law would be dealt with by the end of 2023:

As I have said, we are proposing a new approach, one that will ensure that Ministers and officials are enabled to focus more on reforming retained EU law and doing so faster. I am pleased to say that the Government have already reformed or revoked more than 1,000 pieces of REUL. In addition to the list of about 600 revocations in the schedule to the retained EU law Bill, about 500 further pieces of REUL will be repealed by the Financial Services and Markets Bill and the Procurement Bill, which means that we will have repealed not 600 but more than 2,000 pieces of REUL by the end of the year …

Bill Cash read out his side of the story:

Under the Standing Orders of this House, the European Scrutiny Committee is specifically charged with examining the legal and political consequences of EU legislation. The Committee reported on 21 July 2022 after a five-month inquiry in support of the Bill, which was passed unamended by a large majority in this elected House and by the Public Bill Committee, all of which endorsed the Government’s policy on the Bill.

Since February, the Secretary of State has been asked three times, formally and personally, to appear before the European Scrutiny Committee. Why has she failed to do so? The amendments published today are not accompanied by any explanation to the House—apart from her very short written ministerial statement yesterday and her article in the press today—despite the utter reversal in vital respects of the Bill as passed by this elected House. Why not? The amendments have not been subjected to any analysis or questioning by this House, which is now essential given the fundamental change in Government policy. The House is being treated in a manner that is plainly inconsistent with clear promises already made.

Will my right hon. Friend specifically seek and make arrangements for the immediate deferral of the Bill’s Report stage in the unelected House of Lords, which is due to take place on the 15th and 17th of this month, so that she can come to the European Scrutiny Committee next week and answer our questions—as provided for by Standing Orders—and produce a Command Paper before that Report stage to explain the reasons for these fundamental questions of constitutional importance, which affect all our constituents, all our voters, and the coherence of our statute book and our legal system?

Badenoch responded:

My hon. Friend has asked many questions, and I will endeavour to answer them. I think he knows that he has heard the answers before, but I am nevertheless happy to respond on the Floor of the House.

My hon. Friend and I have had many private conversations in which we have discussed retained EU law. He wrote to me about attending the European Scrutiny Committee, and I replied that until the policy was settled I could not attend the Committee but instead could have engagement with colleagues, which is what I have done. I should, of course, be delighted to attend the European Scrutiny Committee. I attend numerous Select Committees in my role not just as Secretary of State for Business and Trade but as Minister for Women and Equalities, and I should be very happy to speak to the Committee, but—no doubt you will sympathise with this, Mr Speaker— there is no point having to talk about policy on the Floor of the House before we know exactly what is settled.

My hon. Friend claims that this is a change of policy, but it is a change of approach. The policy is still the same: we are ending EU supremacy, and we are ending interpretive effects. What we are changing is the way in which we are doing that. We could have ended up with a programme of 450 statutory instruments to preserve EU law. What I have done is respond to businesses in particular, but also to the parliamentarians—including many of those who are chuntering on the Opposition Benches—who have raised concerns with me about how we can have clarity and some transparency. I have shown exactly what we are doing. I have listed all the laws that we are removing. There is a key point to make here. We left the European Union not just to delete EU law from the statute book, but to make our economy better. To do that, we have to reform the laws. If we delete the laws from the statute book, we will be starting from scratch in bringing in the reforming primary legislation. This is a better approach. It was my suggestion to the Prime Minister. I am very pleased that he accepted it. I am very proud to be standing at the Dispatch Box showing that those of us who are Brexiteers can be pragmatic and do what is right for the British people. That is why I am very pleased to be explaining this change on the Floor of the House today.

No, she was not ‘very pleased’ at all.

Anyway, it was a cracking session, because nearly everyone from both sides of the Commons — Conservatives, too — got on her case.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, her predecessor, asked:

Will my right hon. Friend explain whether this abdication to the House of Lords has come about because of civil service idleness or a lack of ministerial drive?

Badenoch said:

No, I do not think that it has come out of any idleness. If anything, I would say that the civil servants have been working feverishly on this, and what they have been doing is preserving, not repealing and certainly not getting the reforms that we want. This approach means that they can now do that. I know that it is disappointing, because it is not what my right hon. Friend had wanted; it was not his approach. I have spoken to him about it and explained my reasoning. I do not think that we will come to an agreement on this, but I would like him to understand that I am doing this because I genuinely think that this is the best way to deliver what those of us on the Conservative Benches voted for.

‘Civil servants working feverishly’? Pull the other one.

Former Justice Secretary Dominic Raab said:

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) for his question and the Secretary of State for her response. I recognise the balance that she is trying to strike within the timeframe. There is a very large number of EU regulations at the Ministry of Justice, and yet we managed to identify more than 60% that could be either repealed or substantially revised within the timeframe. May I gently suggest to her that it would help the House with its scrutiny if a Department-by-Department analysis of what has been identified so far is published? May I also gently suggest that she resist the resistance in Whitehall that suggests it cannot be done. If it can be done at the MOJ, I am pretty confident that it can be done elsewhere.

She replied:

That is right. I have published the dashboard that shows all of the laws that have been identified. Some are still, even as we speak, being identified now. The MOJ has done a good job in identifying those that are likely to be on the schedule—the ones that my right hon. Friend is referring to specifically. This is a pragmatic and balanced approach. I urge Members across the House to look for the opportunities for reform. We can hear those on the Labour Front Bench chuntering, but they do not have any ideas. They do not know what they want to do. All they want to do is sit down and complain about what we are doing. They are completely bereft of imagination and any sort of direction or approach. We are the only ones who have a way of delivering for this country, and we will continue to do so.

Sir Desmond Swayne zeroed in on the removal of the sunset clause, something that concerns me, too:

The advantage of a sunset is that it provides a sense of urgency. Now there is not one, is there?

She claimed that there was still a sunset clause. I don’t think so:

There is still a sunset, and it will end the interpretive effects of the supremacy of EU law. The same number of measures that we were likely to revoke by the sunset will be in the schedule. As I said, the process had turned from one where we were reforming, to one where we were retaining—I know that is what the Bill literally says, but its purpose had been subverted because of the approach originally taken, which these amendments should address.

The aforementioned David Jones reminded her of her missed opportunities to appear before the committee:

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) has pointed out, the Secretary of State has been invited on three separate occasions to appear before the European Scrutiny Committee, but for whatever reason has failed to do so. Given the seriousness of the volte-face she has now performed, will she accept the invitation of the Chairman, made this morning, and appear before the Committee next week? If not, why not?

Badenoch replied rather breezily:

Because I am in Switzerland next week and in the Middle East the week after. As I said to the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee, I am happy to appear in front of the Committee, and now that we have a settled policy I will do so.

However, two days later, when Business Questions took place, Badenoch had still not set a time to appear before the committee, so he raised it with Penny Mordaunt, Leader of the House, who said that she would follow up on his behalf:

Whatever she said seems to have brought Badenoch before the committee at the beginning of June.

On May 13, when Bill Cash brought his issue to Penny Mordaunt, we had a further blow. The Telegraph reported, ‘Brexit pledge to bring back pounds and ounces stalls’:

Kemi Badenoch, the Business Secretary, this week announced that she would no longer be completing the “Brexit freedoms” process by the year-end.

Under a system designed by her predecessor, Jacob Rees-Mogg, civil servants were required to find all EU rules on the UK statute books by the end of 2023 and select which ones to retain.

All other measures would be automatically scrapped, according to the Retained EU Law Bill currently under scrutiny in the House of Lords …

Her department has published a list of 600 Brussels regulations that will be cancelled at the end of this year.

Not included is the EU rule, passed in 2000, that says the metric system must take precedence in the UK when referring to the weight of products.

It states that while the use of imperial measures as a “supplementary indicator” is permitted, metric units “shall predominate” and must be given in the same or a larger font than imperial measurements.

Plans to reintroduce pounds and ounces have become a totemic issue for Brexiteers since European regulations forced the retirement of pound-bags of sugar and six-ounce jars of jam.

During the 2019 election campaign, Mr Johnson heralded “an era of generosity and tolerance towards traditional measurements” and described the right to use the imperial system as an “ancient liberty” …

Like the committee members and other committed Leave MPs, Badenoch’s responses and general attitude leave me wanting.

She’s not the woman we thought she was.

How unfortunate.

Thank goodness she’s not Prime Minister.