Kemi Badenoch accuses opponents of ‘alarming’ dirty tricks campaign against her

Kemi Badenoch has taken aim at a “petty and puerile” campaign by her opponents to discredit her ahead of the Tory leadership election.

Ms Badenoch, who is widely expected to give the Tory leadership a second punt, took aim at what she described as a “dirty tricks” campaign against her.

The top Tory said it is “amusing/alarming the extraordinary lengths people will go to play dirty tricks”, adding that the attempts to take her down are examples of why the public are “put off politics”.

Ms Badenoch’s claims came after the Spectator website unearthed “rude and confrontational” comments left by her on a Nigerian blog in 2007, in which she called Diane Abbott “a racist hypocrite”, and calling people “idiots”.

Ms Badenoch said that a fellow candidate’s leadership campaign had unearthed the comments and sent them to the Westminster press lobby as part of a “dirty dossier” against her.

She also revealed that a journalist at The Guardian has been texting civil service officials in her old department trying to get someone to make accusations of bullying against her.

In a photo documenting the text evidence, the anonymous journalist is seen saying “If what I’ve heard about [Kemi Badenoch] is true, then it sounds like there is an overwhelming public interest case for investigating those claims. I do hope you consider talking to me”.

Ms Badenoch observed that one of the journalist’s texts to an official was “effectively encouraging them to break the civil service code”.

In a third example, Ms Badenoch pointed to the fact that a ‘Kemi 4 Leader’ website had been set up without her knowledge nor involvement, and had “nothing to do with me”.

She quipped: “I’d never run a site with such obvious errors eg using expensive proprietary images without paying for their use”.

The shadow housing secretary said the website had been “sent round to journal with dishonest claims that it is my campaign website running in maintenance mode”.

Ms Badenoch concluded: “I'm observing all this from a distance, as it's the first day of my kids' school holiday”.

“But these 3 examples, show how so much of the discourse across the political spectrum, is obsessed with the petty and the puerile.

“We can do better than this and I will be saying and writing more about how, in due course.”

Ms Badenoch is yet to launch her campaign, nor has she yet submitted her nomination forms to the 1922 Committee chairman Bob Blackman.

So far Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly and Robert Jenrick have all secured the requisite backers and formerly entered the race.

Priti Patel, Mel Stride and Suella Braverman are all understood to be considering running to replace Rishi Sunak.