Cleverly Refuses to Back Badenoch's Gestapo Comparison, Calling It Language He Would Not Have Used

Since Badenoch refused to apologize for the Gestapo remark, a position she held through last week's PMQs row covered in our June 24 report, her shadow cabinet has now begun to fracture publicly over it.

Shadow Housing Secretary James Cleverly appeared on BBC One's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg on June 28 and was asked directly whether he would have compared Phillipson to a Gestapo officer. His answer: "No, I probably wouldn't have done."

He restated it later in the same interview: "That wouldn't have been the phraseology that I would use."

A senior frontbencher drew a clear line between himself and his leader on live television, without being pushed particularly hard.

What Badenoch Actually Said

The remark originated in an interview Badenoch gave to The Spectator earlier this month. She told the magazine that Phillipson "has acted like a Gestapo officer" in closing independent schools that did not fit her ideology, a reference to the government's decision to end the VAT exemption on private school fees.

Badenoch later explained her meaning directly: "I compared her to a Gestapo officer, acting like a Gestapo officer, with the way she was closing down those schools which didn't appeal to her own ideology."

Her spokesperson did not walk the comparison back. The official statement, reported by HuffPost UK, argued that Phillipson had "pursued a class war on independent schools, forcing many treasured schools to shut, upending the lives of young people across the country," and added that even the Department for Education's own website shows teacher numbers are lower now than under the Conservatives.

Phillipson's Response

Phillipson came out hard. On X, she wrote: "The Gestapo marched hundreds of thousands of innocent people to their deaths. I've ended private schools' tax breaks to invest in state schools. No responsible leader makes vile comparisons like this. Kemi Badenoch is not fit to be Prime Minister."

That response is itself a rhetorical choice. Phillipson deliberately invoked the Gestapo's worst crimes to maximize the contrast, rather than engaging with the underlying policy argument.

Labour MP Phil Brickell, secretary of the all-party parliamentary group on Germany, called the comparison "contemptible" and "unbecoming of any parliamentarian," according to HuffPost UK. He said Badenoch should "withdraw her comments immediately and unreservedly apologise," warning the remarks "undermine the UK-Germany relationship."

Labour chair Anna Turley went further, saying Cleverly's distancing proved that even Badenoch's own team knows "full well" the comments were "completely appalling and deeply inappropriate."

The Strongest Case for Badenoch

Critics of Phillipson have a legitimate policy argument beneath the inflammatory language. The VAT change was sold as a revenue raiser to fund additional teachers in state schools. The Conservative Party, and now Badenoch's own spokesperson, points to Department for Education data showing teacher numbers have actually fallen since the policy was implemented. If that data is accurate, the stated rationale for the policy has not been delivered.

Badenoch's broader framing—that punishing families for spending their own money on private education is ideologically motivated rather than fiscally necessary—is a defensible political position. The fight over independent school VAT is a genuine values dispute about class, public funding, and parental choice, not a manufactured controversy.

The problem is that the word "Gestapo" does not carry that argument forward. It carries the Holocaust. Those two things are not the same, and conflating a contested tax policy with Nazi secret police conduct is a comparison most reasonable people, including apparently Cleverly, will not make.

The Internal Tory Problem

Cleverly tried to thread the needle. He defended the substance of Badenoch's critique, saying Phillipson's agenda is "about punishing people who spend their own money," while refusing to endorse the specific language. He also accused Labour of double standards, noting that Labour figures had labeled Conservative MP Nick Timothy's comments about a Muslim religious gathering "racist" without comparable outrage.

That's a fair point about consistency. A senior shadow cabinet member publicly said he would not have used his own party leader's language.

Labour's claim that Cleverly "failed to back" Badenoch, as HuffPost UK framed it, is accurate in the narrow sense. But framing it as a catastrophic collapse, as Labour chair Turley did, overstates what a single careful TV answer means.

The Independent reported that the post-PMQs confrontation last Wednesday included Phillipson telling Badenoch, "The public are going to find out who you really are," and Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall telling Badenoch directly that her conduct was "outrageous." A Tory source said Badenoch responded by saying, "I'll fight you all the way, you're destroying children's lives."

What's Unresolved

Badenoch has not apologized and, based on her spokesperson's statement, has no apparent intention to. The substantive question her party keeps raising, whether teacher numbers have actually fallen since the private school VAT was introduced, has not been publicly addressed by the Department for Education in the sources available. If that data holds up, it is a concrete policy failure that Labour will need to answer for, regardless of the language used to surface it.