Kemi Badenoch has discovered a legal loophole so elegant it required hiring lawyers to explain it: she can simultaneously oppose a 94% council tax rise while belonging to the party that caused it. The Wandsworth Council increase is the government’s fault, she says. The government is her party. Therefore, she opposes herself.
The council blames funding cuts from central government. Central government, run by her party, cut the funding. Badenoch’s solution is to hire lawyers to challenge the government—the one her party controls—for the cuts that forced the council—also run by her party—to raise taxes by nearly double digits.
Does this create a logical paradox where she is simultaneously the problem and the solution? Yes, but lawyers are expensive enough that they’ll bill through the contradiction.
The beauty of this move is that it costs nothing to oppose yourself when you have no actual power to change the circumstances you created. A strongly worded legal challenge sounds like action. It is not action. It is a press release with a paralegal’s signature.
Wandsworth residents will see their bills spike. Badenoch will see her poll numbers spike. The lawyers will see their invoices spike. Everyone wins except the people paying 94% more to live in a council that their representatives broke and then hired counsel to fight about.