Michael Gove backs Kemi Badenoch as next prime minister

Michael Gove has backed Kemi Badenoch as the next Tory leader, praising her “no bull—” approach.

The former Levelling Up Secretary is the highest profile supporter she has so far received for her campaign.

Mr Gove, who was sacked by Boris Johnson on his final night in Downing Street before he announced he would stand down, said Mrs Badenoch’s “focus and intellect” meant she was the right person for the job.

Writing in The Sun, Mr Gove said: “As I reflect on what it takes to deliver in government - on the mistakes I’ve made, the lessons I’ve learned, the progress I helped secure - I know one thing is true above all. If you want to drive change, empower the right people. Kemi Badenoch has the Right Stuff.”

He added that the Tory party needs a leader with “Kemi’s focus, intellect and no-bulls— drive”.

Mrs Badenoch, 42, will warn on Monday that free speech is “no longer something we can take for granted” as she puts anti-woke at the heart of her leadership campaign.

The former equalities minister will argue that attacks on free speech “usually harm the people who have least power” in society.

The MP for Saffron Walden, who is seen as a rising star in the Tory party, launched her leadership bid on Saturday saying that she supported lower taxes “to boost growth and productivity, and accompanied by tight spending discipline”.

On Monday she will address an audience of over 200 free speech campaigners and MPs at an event in the House of Lords.

The event, which is organised by a cross-party group of peers, was already in Mrs Badenoch’s diary prior to her leadership bid as she had been due to speak there in her capacity as equalities minister.

Mrs Badenoch, who quit as a minister in the Department for Levelling Up in a joint move with four colleagues last week, is standing for the Conservative leadership on a platform of “lighter, simpler, nimbler government”.

On Sunday, Neil O’Brien, a former levelling up minister, became the latest MP to throw his weight behind Mrs Badenoch.

Writing for The Telegraph, he praised her “staunch and fair” principles, adding that when the “worst and most extreme elements of the Labour left were screaming at her”, Mrs Badenoch always won the argument in a calm and eloquent manner.

In a speech on Monday, Mrs Badenoch will say: “Free speech is no longer something we can take for granted as a commonly shared value.

“The reality is that attacks on free speech usually harm the people who have least power. They don’t control institutions which is why they rely on their voices and the tools of persuasion and reason.

“I know from experience that speaking about subjects like race, ethnicity or LGBT rights, can land you in hot water, but as an MP, I am safer than a lot of people who genuinely fear losing their job.”

She will go on to say that more and more people are “waking up to the eternal truth that it is wrong and dangerous to limit speech” and that it can lead to “bad outcomes for society, and it can marginalise the very groups we claim to want to protect”.

Mrs Badenoch spent the past two-and-a-half years as an equalities minister in the Department for Levelling Up before she quit the role on July 6.

Two days later, she announced her candidacy via a column in The Times newspaper in which she took aim at the Blairite “cultural establishment” and identity politics while pledging to return the party to a low-tax trajectory.

In 2020, she gave an acclaimed speech on the trend of “critical race theory” in schools that was voted Speech of the Year by readers of the Conservative Home website.