Is Kemi Badenoch getting better at being Conservative leader?

Kemi Badenoch has a hard-earned reputation for combativeness, especially on culture war issues, but at prime minister’s questions, with the murder of the teenager Henry Nowak in the headlines, Keir Starmer ended up thanking the Conservative leader for her “tone”. So is she a changed politician? Well, not exactly.

To an extent, Badenoch’s approach ahead of her weekly Commons showdown with Starmer was shaped by events. Widespread concern on Wednesday at the police response to Nowak’s murder – the student was handcuffed while he bled to death after being falsely accused of racism – spiralled into rioting on Tuesday night. The imperative not to inflame matters further was obvious.

Similarly, Badenoch has good reason to differentiate herself on the issue from Nigel Farage, who has been widely condemned for his rhetoric about the case, despite Nowak’s family urging politicians not to use the 18-year-old’s death to sow division.

“It is the responsibility of everyone in this house to bring people together, not divide them,” Badenoch said, to which Starmer replied: “Can I just first thank her for her approach and her tone in relation to this.”

A bigger clue to her motivation, however, came at the start of Badenoch’s comments, when she said the circumstances surrounding Nowak’s wrongful arrest had to be “a wake-up call to the entire country and our institutions that every life matters”.

This is different from the official government view that while the police bodycam footage of the arrest is deeply shocking, and raises questions about why officers believed the false claim by Nowak’s killer, Vickrum Digwa, that he had been racially abused, everyone should wait for an inquiry by the police watchdog before reaching conclusions.

Badenoch, in contrast, has already made firm conclusions, as set out in a Daily Mail article on Wednesday morning. The police actions were, she wrote, the fault of identity politics, in part the result of the Black Lives Matter movement. It was time, she said, to “root out all identity politics from state institutions”.

This has been Badenoch’s mantra for years. As equalities minister in the last Conservative government she oversaw a controversial report on racial disparities which largely downplayed the role of institutional and structural factors.