QUENTIN LETTS: The BBC used to scrutinise politicians with calm balance. The Leftist aggression of its so-called star interviewer Emma Barnett toward Kemi Badenoch was just snooty and crass

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By QUENTIN LETTS, PARLIAMENTARY SKETCHWRITER

Published: 16:05 BST, 10 September 2026 | Updated: 16:22 BST, 10 September 2026

When peace-keepers have a moment to spare from their endeavours in the Middle East, could they please sort things out between Kemi Badenoch and the BBC’s so-called star interviewer Emma Barnett? Blue helmets, chest armour and cricket boxes may need to be worn.

Mrs Badenoch agreed to an interview on the Today programme. A ten-minute talk with the Leader of the Opposition on Radio 4 would once have been an opportunity for the BBC to extract news lines. Alas, Barnett was chosen to conduct the interview. She was dreadful.

The interview quickly descended into a shouting-match, a raccoon fight, a shriek-fest. And all at breakfast time. Around the country, boiled eggs may have been decapitated with rare severity as listeners flexed their annoyance.

The two women spoke simultaneously, sometimes snippily, sometimes with sarcastic politeness. Mrs Badenoch – introduced as ‘Ms’ with a curl of the lip from Barnett – had been invited to discuss Andy Burnham’s marmalade-dropper at PMQs this week when he said ‘national security can’t come at the expense of social security’.

Tories reckoned that unscripted remark showed Mr Burnham had no intention to cut welfare.

Barnett, having prefaced her first question by noting that welfare spending ballooned under the Boris Johnson government (er, that will have been the pandemic), reached for what Jeremy Paxman used to call a ‘rabbit punch’ opener. Her first question was: ‘Are you willing to make people homeless in the name of national defence?’

Mrs Badenoch agreed to an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme – but the ten-minute talk with the Leader of the Opposition quickly descended into a shouting-match

Mrs Badenoch replied that if we were attacked by the Russians there weren’t going to be any benefits. Mr Burnham was ‘saying benefits are effectively more important’ than defence.

Those opening 30 seconds or so had been reasonably genteel. But that was the end of it. After that we just had mustard gas and acrimony.

‘That’s not what was said,’ snapped Barnett.

Mrs Badenoch (twice): ‘That’s what it means.’

Barnett: ‘Not necessarily!’ She accused her guest of taking the PM’s words ‘out of context’.

Mrs Badenoch, growling: ‘I’m not.’

Barnett, coming over so snooty, her eyebrows must have touched her hairline: ‘That’s YOUR interpretation.’

Mrs Badenoch broke her beer bottle on the table and prepared to mush it in Barnett’s chops. ‘Well what else does it mean?’ she demanded.

In the corner of the room a barman quietly pressed his emergency buzzer and the brothel pianist lowered his instrument’s lid and slunk towards the exit before the pistols started firing.

‘If I may reply,’ sneered Barnett. ‘You didn’t answer my question as to whether you want to make people homeless.’ Mrs Badenoch essayed a compressed explanation of Conservative policy but she was encountering a certain squawking from her interlocutor. It used to get like this on old wirelesses when, amid whistles and a snowstorm of interference, Radio Hilversum bled into Timisoara, Athlone or the Allouis longwave transmitter.

Emma Barnett was aghast that welfare claimants might be told to move out of expensive areas if they ran out of money, to which Mrs Badenoch said: ‘That’s what everyone else does’

Barnett was aghast that welfare claimants might be told to move out of expensive areas if they ran out of money. Mrs Badenoch: ‘That’s what everyone else does.’ Smelling salts for the production team.

‘I’m trying to help the public,’ claimed Barnett after another incomprehensible flurry of screamed yes-buttery while the Tory leader was talking. ‘No, no, no,’ railed the presenter while Mrs Badenoch tried to argue that the country would go bankrupt unless welfare spending was reduced. Barnett: ‘Sorry, if I could just finish.’ That ‘sorry’ was pure Vicky Pollard.

Then she told off Kemi for interrupting. Classic. ‘I’m listening,’ said Mrs B. Longish pause before Barnett, resentfully, said: ‘Are you?’

The BBC woman also noted, with triumph, that 52 per cent of the country apparently agreed with Labour’s sanctions on Israel. As it happens, the same margin voted for us to leave the EU. Beeboids were rather less keen on that.

Politicians’ claims need to be checked and challenged. The BBC used to do that with a calm balance this interview lacked. This was just crass, Leftish aggression. Worse, it extracted no fresh information about how the Conservatives would find welfare savings in order to pay for defence.