Kemi Badenoch has accused one of her Conservative leadership rivals of a dirty tricks campaign against her as she continues to consider a bid for the top job.
The shadow business secretary attacked her critics after a dossier was circulated claiming she was behind anonymous blog comments written 17 years ago in which the author celebrated being rude and made abusive remarks.
Badenoch posted in response on social media that it was “amusing/alarming the extraordinary lengths people will go to play dirty tricks”, claiming that “apparently, a leadership campaign has sent a ‘dirty dossier’ of ‘strong comments’ from 20 yrs ago to the Westminster lobby”.
She added: “We can do better than this, and I will be saying and writing more about how in due course.”
Badenoch also said much of the “discourse across the political spectrum is obsessed with the petty and the puerile”.
The claims within the dossier were first published in the Spectator, which asked: “Could these be the online comments of young Kemi Badenoch?” Some of the comments talked about stereotypes of Thai and Nigerian women, while another called Diane Abbott a “hypocrite”.
Another said: “Most of the people who changed the world, for good were notoriously rude. It was the bad people, Idi Amin, Hitler etc who were charming and respectful. People like you would have been defending them that they were good people because they had good manners. Robert Mugabe was also once known for his good manners!!”
Friends of Badenoch said she had owned a user profile on the website but much of the material in the dossier was from another poster calling themselves “kemi”. They said it was a common name and there was a lot of impersonation happening on the website, and Badenoch could not remember which, if any of the remarks were made by her.
Badenoch is yet to throw her hat into the ring alongside James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat and Mel Stride, who all say they have support of the required 10 MPs to nominate them for the Tory leadership. Her camp said on Friday that she was “in no danger of not having the numbers”.
The former business secretary previously ran for the Tory leadership after the resignation of Boris Johnson and came fourth but is now considered to be a frontrunner, having appealed to the membership with her uncompromising rightwing views.
Priti Patel, the former home secretary, is also thought to be likely to enter the contest, while Suella Braverman, another former home secretary, is canvassing for support.
Stride was the latest Conservative MP to announce he intended to run for the leadership, saying the Tories had “substantially lost the trust of the British people”.
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The former work and pensions secretary said on Friday morning he had won enough parliamentary support to run as a candidate in the leadership contest, which formally begins next week and will run until November.
The MP for Central Devon told BBC Breakfast: “I’m fully nominated. I was nominated yesterday morning and my candidacy has gone forward.”
He added: “What we know from the general election is that we’re in a very, very difficult place as a party, and I worry about that because I care about my party and I care about my country.
“We have substantially lost the trust of the British people and we’ve lost our reputation for competence, and I believe that I’m in a very good position to address those issues going forward. In terms of trust, I think [the party] needs somebody who is going to be able to unite the party.”