I’ve been waiting for some English politician to connect Kemi Badenoch with that other infamous Badenoch:

Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan, called the Wolf of Badenoch (1343 – July 1394), was a Scottish royal prince, the third son of King Robert II of Scotland by his first wife Elizabeth Mure. He was Justiciar of Scotia and held large territories in the north of Scotland. He is best remembered for his destruction of the royal burgh of Elgin and its cathedral. His sobriquet was given due to his notorious cruelty and rapacity.

There is a legend that Stewart—the “Wolf of Badenoch”—died after a chess game with the Devil. According to this legend, Stewart was visited at Ruthven Castle by a tall man dressed in black. The two played chess through the night, with a storm rising when the stranger called “Check” and “Check Mate”. The legend says that the next morning the Wolf of Badenoch was found dead in the castle’s hall, with his men dead outside the castle walls.¹

None have so far. I guess they’ve all done the Greek classics and are waiting to compare her to a murderous female character in those.

I can’t be the only Scot whose brain cells pinged when we first heard her name.

She takes her name from husband Hamish:

Hamish works for Deutsche Bank and is a former Conservative councillor on Merton London Borough Council, from 2014 to 2018. He was born to a mother who emigrated to London from Ireland – where he later stood as the Conservative candidate for Foyle, in Northern Ireland, in 2015 but failed to get elected. Growing up he was head boy at Ampleforth school and then studied at Cambridge University.²

Head boy, eh?

A bit different from his ancestor, more an ‘off wi’ yer heid guy?’:

Back to the present with Kemi who has worked for the Royal Bank of Scotland before so will no doubt claim to be ‘Scohttish’ at some point:

Kemi Badenoch makes devolution threat in Tory conference speech. TORY leadership contender Kemi Badenoch has suggested she would make major changes to the devolution settlement should she win the role and one day become prime minister.

In a pitch to the Tory conference in Birmingham, the MP vowed to “reprogramme” parts of the British state – which would involve “looking at” everything from the Human Rights Act to devolution itself.  The speech came after Badenoch found herself in a series of media storms, after criticising maternity pay as “excessive” and suggesting minimum wage is harming businesses.³

So, not likely to be any more empathetic to Scotland than the Wolf was to Elgin?

More:

In her maiden speech as an MP on 19 July 2017, she described the vote for Brexit as “the greatest ever vote of confidence in the project of the United Kingdom” and cited her personal heroes as the Conservative politicians Winston Churchill, Airey Neave and Margaret Thatcher. In 2018, Badenoch admitted that, a decade earlier, she had hacked into the website of Harriet Harman as a prank, who was then Deputy Leader of the Labour Party; Harman accepted Badenoch’s apology, but the matter was reported to Action Fraud, the UK’s cyber crime reporting centre.

In July 2024, The Guardian reported that at least three officials working under Badenoch had experienced bullying in the Department for Business and Trade and that she had created an intimidating atmosphere whilst she was in charge. According to this report, the officials felt “pushed out” by “bullying and traumatising” behaviour and claimed that individuals were regularly humiliated and occasionally left in tears after working with her. ⁴

Footnote – I know this is daft. Humour me.

Sources:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Stewart,_Earl_of_Buchan
2. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/19183786/who-kemi-badenochs-husband-hamish/
3. https://www.thenational.scot/news/24624782.kemi-badenoch-makes-devolution-threat-tory-conference-speech/
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemi_Badenoch#:~:text=10%20External%20links-,Early%20life%20and%20education,born%20to%20Nigerian%20Yoruba%20parents.