Does Kemi cause problems for Kemi?

Kemi Badenoch is being followed around the Tory party conference by her own comments about maternity pay. She had to explain what she was on about again when she had her main stage interview in the Birmingham hall this afternoon, telling Chris Hope that ‘I think maternity pay is quite important’, and that she was ‘answering a different question’ about business regulation. She then compared the row to the way Margaret Thatcher’s Women’s Own magazine comments about ‘there is no such thing as society’ were ‘cut down into a soundbite that was used to attack her’. She added:

When you are a leader, when you are a conservative, when you are making the argument for conservative principles, your opponents are going to try and turn it into something else. We need to decide who’s going to be leader of the party, not the left, not the Guardian, not the BBC, just Conservatives.