Badenoch v Staunton: a public mudslinging over the Post Office

Kemi Badenoch and Henry Staunton have clashed repeatedly over his sacking as chair of the Post Office. Composite: Getty; Sky

It’s not often that relations between politicians (particularly Conservative ones) and business leaders descend into full-blown rows. It is rarer still that we, the public, find out just how sour the arguments are.

But in the past few days Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, and Henry Staunton, the recently sacked chair of the Post Office, have turned their disagreement on the handling of the Horizon scandal into a public mudslinging battle that has dominated news headlines.

Here we examine the origins of the tussle, and the two combatants.

What’s the row about?

Badenoch and Staunton clashed over the Post Office’s handling of the Horizon IT software scandal amid public outrage following ITV’s Mr Bates vs the Post Office drama. Badenoch, 44, sacked Staunton late last month, but initially said they “parted ways with mutual consent”.

Staunton, 75, fought back in an interview with the Sunday Times, claiming Badenoch had told him that “someone’s got to take the rap” for the scandal.

Badenoch increased the temperature further with a statement in the Commons on Monday, describing his interview as a “blatant attempt to seek revenge”. She added that she had dismissed Staunton over “serious matters such as bullying” and concerns about his “willingness to cooperate” with a formal investigation into his conduct.

He denies this, describing the fresh claims as “astonishing” and saying that listening to her speak in the Commons was the “first time the existence of such allegations have been mentioned”.

Who is Kemi Badenoch, and what is her business experience?

She was born in Wimbledon, south London, in 1980, but spent most of her childhood in Lagos, Nigeria, where her father worked as a GP, and the US, where her psychology professor mother worked as a lecturer.

She came back to the UK at 16 to finish her education, and worked part-time at McDonald’s while studying for her A-levels in Morden in south London.

Badenoch studied computer systems engineering at the University of Sussex, and went on to work in IT as a software engineer. At night, she studied law at Birkbeck, University of London. She then worked at Coutts, the private bank that serves only millionaires and the royal family, and was digital director of the influential rightwing magazine the Spectator.

She is married to Hamish Badenoch, a former a Deutsche Bank banker and former Tory councillor in Merton. They met at the Dulwich and West Norwood Conservative Club in 2009. “He helped me deliver my leaflets,” she has said. They have three children.

She was a Brexiter and said in her maiden speech to parliament in 2017 that the referendum vote was “the greatest ever vote of confidence in the project of the United Kingdom”. Her husband was a remainer. “We have had robust arguments but respect each other’s view,” she told the Independent in 2017.

What is Badenoch’s political experience?

She joined the Conservative party in 2005, aged 25. In 2010, she stood as the Tory candidate in Dulwich and West Norwood, and came third behind Labour’s Tessa Jowell and the Liberal Democrat candidate Jonathan Mitchell.

She stood for the Conservatives in the London assembly election in 2012, coming fifth on the London-wide list – meaning she was not elected. She became an assembly member in 2015 after two other Tories became MPs, and she retained the position at the 2016 election.

Badenoch finally achieved her dream of being elected to parliament at the 2017 general election when she stood in the safe Conservative seat of Saffron Walden, Essex.

She described herself as an example of the “British dream”, an “immigrant who came to the UK aged 16 and who became a parliamentarian” in one generation. She cites Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher as two of her heroes.

She became a member of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs, and served as Boris Johnson’s minister for children and families, then exchequer secretary to the Treasury, minister for equalities, and minister for local government, faith and communities.

When Johnson quit, she stood for the Tory party leadership, promising to “tell the truth” and advocating “strong but limited government”. Liz Truss won, and Badenoch was appointed international trade secretary. She was promoted to her current role by Rishi Sunak.

What is Badenoch best known for?

In two words, being “anti-woke”. She has been described as “the new darling of the right” and a “culture warrior”. Badenoch has said schools are suffering from an “epidemic” of children being told about transgender issues, and said “we are traumatised by what is happening to young children and we are not going to run away from this issue any longer”.

In December, she condemned an academic study examining whether ethnicity was a risk factor with medieval plague as “woke archaeology”.

Who is Henry Staunton, and what is his business experience?

Staunton has had a long and varied business career, but his name was certainly not household until this week. He was educated at the £19,704-a-year Ipswich School, where he now serves as chair of the governors.

He went on to read economics and statistics at the University of Exeter, and became an accountant at Price Waterhouse. After 11 years’ service, he became a partner, and then a senior audit partner with responsibility for big clients including Reuters.

Staunton served as finance director for ITV, and has been the chair of WH Smith, the property company Capital & Counties, the industrial equipment rental firm Ashtead Group and the insurer Phoenix Group, and vice-chair of Legal & General.

He is married with two grown-up children. In 1995, he was described as “one of the few people in the country to play Eton Fives”. While the game, a form of handball played in a three-sided court, is named after a corner of Eton College Chapel, it is also played at Ipswich School.

What is Staunton’s public service experience?

Staunton appears to have been fresh to the world of government-run services when he was appointed chair of the Post Office in December 2022. Kwasi Kwarteng, then business secretary, said Staunton “brings notable expertise and experience”.

Staunton said he was “delighted to be appointed chair of the Post Office as it continues its modernisation, working in partnership with its postmasters”.

What has Staunton said about the Post Office?

Few outside the world of City boardrooms would have been aware of Staunton until his dismissal on 27 January. Instead of leaving quietly, Staunton pushed his sacking to the top of the news agenda with an interview to the Sunday Times.

In it he suggested a senior civil servant had told him to go slow on compensating victims of the Horizon scandal in order to allow the Conservatives to “limp into the election”.

“Early on, I was told by a fairly senior person to stall on spend on compensation and on the replacement of Horizon, and to limp, in quotation marks – I did a file note on it – limp into the election,” he said.

“It was not an anti-postmaster thing, it was just straight financials. I didn’t ask, because I said: ‘I’m having no part of it – I’m not here to limp into the election, it’s not the right thing to do by postmasters.’ The word ‘limp’ gives you a snapshot of where they were.”