Kemi Badenoch reignites feud with Doctor Who star David Tennant in 'weird' Tory leadership bid

Kemi Badenoch, the former business secretary now hoping to become the next leader of the Conservative Party, has released a video teasing the launch of her leadership campaign, in which she once again takes aim at Doctor Whostar David Tennant amid their ongoing feud over LGBT+ rights.

Opening the video with a clip of Tennant at the British LGBT Awards back in June, the Good Omens star can be heard cracking a joke about fighting for LGBT+ rights “until we wake up and Kemi Badenoch doesn’t exist anymore”.

“I don’t wish ill of her, I just wish her to shut up,” he added.

The comments sparked fury from right-wingers at the time, with Badenoch labelling the actor a “bigot” in response and then prime minister Rishi Sunak writing on X that “if you’re calling for women to shut up and wishing they didn’t exist, you are the problem”.

Meanwhile Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, now our PM, said he “wouldn’t have engaged in the way” Tennant did, and that people should disagree with others “with respect for everybody involved in that robust discussion”.

And in a new response to Tennant in the video posted on Sunday, Badenoch said she “will not shut up”.

“When you have that type of cultural establishment trying to keep conservatives down, you need someone like me, who’s not afraid of Doctor Who or whoever, and who’s going to take the fight to them, and not let them try and keep us down.

“That’s not going to happen with me,” she said.

Then, like a Marvel post-credits scene, after confirming she would officially launch her leadership bid on Monday at 11am, the video ends with Badenoch being “clear” on how to pronounce her last name.

“Also, it’s not ‘Bad-enoch’; it’s Badenoch. There’s no ‘bad’ in my name,” she says, with the correct pronunciation of the first half rhyming with ‘made’.

Unsurprisingly, many rushed to the defence of Tennant as an acclaimed and beloved actor:

Others pointed out that it was the “weirdest marketing campaign” they’d seen and how bizarre it was to go after a “national treasure”:

Since announcing her intention to become the next Tory party leader, Badenoch’s campaign has run under the banner of ‘Renewal 2030’, with the North West Essex MP vowing to “fight for Conservativism again” and “renew our movement” if elected.

Grouping her beliefs into three areas, her campaign website says Conservatives believe in “truth”, “responsibility” and “our country”, with the latter point stating that Tories are “proud of our history and reject attempts to force us into identity groups”.

It echoes stances taken by the former minister for women and equalities on issues such as race and LGBTQ+ identities having previously attacked the teaching of “political race theory” in schools and taking the bizarre step of adding handwritten “men” and “women” signs to toilets at her 2022 campaign launch to make them gendered.

Badenoch is one of six candidates vying to succeed Sunak as the next leader of the Conservative Party, with the others being former immigration minister Robert Jenrick, ex-home secretary Priti Patel, former work and pensions secretary Mel Stride, shadow home secretary James Cleverly and ex-security minister Tom Tugendhat.

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