‘She’s a goner’: Dominic Cummings predicts timing of Kemi Badenoch’s downfall

Published

2 days ago

May 29, 2025

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Kemi Badenoch will be gone as Tory leader within a year – and there are plots already under way to oust her, Dominic Cummings has said.

The former Number 10 aide also claimed the Conservative Party “might be dead”.

His remarks came in a wide-ranging interview with Sky News, in which the controversial figure, who served as Boris Johnson’s chief adviser from 2019 to 2020, said Nigel Farage could “definitely” become the next prime minister.

On Ms Badenoch, who won the Tory leadership race last November, Mr Cummings said: “Kemi is going to go, probably this year.

“There’s already people who are organising to get rid of her, and I think that that will work. If it doesn’t work this year, it will definitely happen after next May.

“She’s a goner, so there’s going to be a big transition there.”

In a damning indictment of the party he served, he said: “It’s quite possible the Tories have just, kind of, crossed the event horizon and actually aren’t salvageable.

“Like, everyone sort of assumes that because they’ve always been around, then somehow there must be at least one last chance for them to turn things around, but it’s possible that chance is in their past and doesn’t exist.

“It might be dead.”

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Mr Cummings revealed he has held meetings with Mr Farage and advised him on how to go from “one man and an iPhone” to entering Downing Street.

Asked if the Reform UK leader could be prime minister, he said: “It could definitely happen now, yeah, because the old system’s just so completely broken.

“If he does what I’m suggesting, and actually sets out a path for how Reform is going to change, how Reform is going to bring in people, how it’s structurally going to alter, what it’s going to build, how it is going to do policy, how it can recruit MPs, etc.

“If he does that, then there’ll be a huge surge of interest and support into the whole thing.”

‘One man and an iPhone’

He added: “Reform has been a one-man band. It’s been Nigel and an iPhone.

“They can win 50, 100, 150 seats with Reform as Nigel and an iPhone.

“But they can’t win an overall general election and have a plan for government and have a serious team able to take over in Downing Street and govern and control Whitehall with one man and an iPhone.”

However, the ex-Downing Street aide was also scathing about Mr Farage’s personal appeal, saying it was his party, not him, that had become an outlet for anti-establishment feeling.

“It’s not exactly correlated with what people think about Nigel himself,” he said.

“Reform is a vehicle for people to say: ‘We despise you, Westminster. We hate both the old parties, we hate Whitehall, we hate the old media, we hate the whole f***ing lot of you.’

“And Farage going up in the polls is the expression of that core feeling.”

Mr Cummings left his Downing Street role in November 2020 after attracting controversy during the coronavirus lockdown when he drove to Barnard Castle in County Durham and claimed he was testing his eyesight.

Politics

‘No doubt’ UK will spend 3% of GDP on defence in next parliament, defence secretary says

Published

3 hours ago

May 31, 2025

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'No doubt' UK will spend 3% of GDP on defence in next parliament, defence secretary says

There is “no doubt” the UK “will spend 3% of our GDP on defence” in the next parliament, the defence secretary has said.

John Healey’s comments come ahead of the publication of the government’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR) on Monday.

This is an assessment of the state of the armed forces, the threats facing the UK, and the military transformation required to meet them.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has previously set out a “clear ambition” to raise defence spending to 3% in the next parliament “subject to economic and fiscal conditions”.

Mr Healey has now told The Times newspaper there is a “certain decade of rising defence spending” to come, adding that this commitment “allows us to plan for the long term. It allows us to deal with the pressures.”

A government source insisted the defence secretary was “expressing an opinion, which is that he has full confidence that the government will be able to deliver on its ambition”, rather than making a new commitment.

The UK currently spends 2.3% of GDP on defence, with Sir Keir announcing plans to increase that to 2.5% by 2027 in February.

This followed mounting pressure from the White House for European nations to do more to take on responsibility for their own security and the defence of Ukraine.

The 2.3% to 2.5% increase is being paid for by controversial cuts to the international aid budget, but there are big questions over where the funding for a 3% rise would be found, given the tight state of government finances.

While a commitment will help underpin the planning assumptions made in the SDR, there is of course no guarantee a Labour government would still be in power during the next parliament to have to fulfil that pledge.

A statement from the Ministry of Defence makes it clear that the official government position has not changed in line with the defence secretary’s comments.

The statement reads: “This government has announced the largest sustained increase to defence spending since the end of the Cold War – 2.5% by 2027 and 3% in the next parliament when fiscal and economic conditions allow, including an extra £5bn this financial year.

“The SDR will rightly set the vision for how that uplift will be spent, including new capabilities to put us at the leading edge of innovation in NATO, investment in our people and making defence an engine for growth across the UK – making Britain more secure at home and strong abroad.”

Sir Keir commissioned the review shortly after taking office in July 2024. It is being led by Lord Robertson, a former Labour defence secretary and NATO secretary general.

The Ministry of Defence has already trailed a number of announcements as part of the review, including plans for a new Cyber and Electromagnetic Command and a £1bn battlefield system known as the Digital Targeting Web, which we’re told will “better connect armed forces weapons systems and allow battlefield decisions for targeting enemy threats to be made and executed faster”.

On Saturday, the defence secretary announced a £1.5bn investment to tackle damp, mould and make other improvements to poor quality military housing in a bid to improve recruitment and retention.

Mr Healey pledged to “turn round what has been a national scandal for decades”, with 8,000 military family homes currently unfit for habitation.

He said: “The Strategic Defence Review, in the broad, will recognise that the fact that the world is changing, threats are increasing.

“In this new era of threat, we need a new era for defence and so the Strategic Defence Review will be the vision and direction for the way that we’ve got to strengthen our armed forces to make us more secure at home, stronger abroad, but also learn the lessons from Ukraine as well.

“So an armed forces that can be more capable of innovation more quickly, stronger to deter the threats that we face and always with people at the heart of our forces… which is why the housing commitments that we make through this strategic defence review are so important for the future.”