Badenoch plotted to remove Sunak as PM months before election, book claims

Anthony Seldon’s book alleges Badenoch asked fellow Tory ministers ‘if anyone was interested in changing the captain’ Kemi Badenoch plotted with fellow Conservative cabinet ministers to remove Rishi Sunak as prime minister months before the general election, it has been claimed. Anthony Seldon, who has written political biographies of every prime minister since John Major, has alleged in a new book that Badenoch, who was business secretary at the time, phoned several other cabinet ministers to ask “if anyone was interested in changing the captain”. An ally of Badenoch, who is now the Conservative leader, described the claim as “total bollocks”. The book about Sunak’s time as prime minister, which is being serialised in the Independent, says Badenoch did not respect Sunak, who she believed had been rude to her. Citing a series of sources, it says she sought to oust Sunak in 2023, when he faced considerable internal pressure over migration policy. It quotes one Conservative MP, who the book says is now a member of Badenoch’s frontbench team, as saying she was “a menace who orchestrated trouble in the cabinet” under Sunak. The book, titled Sunak at 10: The Last Conservative PM?, cites