Watching Kemi Badenoch being interviewed this morning on the BBC, I couldn’t help but think of one of the public shamings during the Chinese Cultural Revolution: confess your crime, woman who refuses to watch Adolescence.
Breakfast hosts Charlie Stayt and Naga Munchetty asked the Conservative leader whether she had finally watched the Netflix drama about a teenage boy who kills a classmate, which has now been adopted as a sort of sacred artefact by much of the left. It has even been the subject of a Downing Street summit, during which the prime minister suggested that it be shown by every school in the country.
Their question followed Mrs Badenoch telling LBC presenter Nick Ferrari last week that she hadn’t seen the programme – which was, he then suggested, ‘almost a dereliction of duty’.
Cue what seemed like the entire left media and political establishment exploding with outrage that she had not watched it.
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