Kemi Badenoch has hit again at Sir Keir Starmer for joking about her feedback on working at McDonald’s – saying he would face calls to resign if he had been a Conservative prime minister.
Ms Badenoch, who changed Rishi Sunak as Tory chief final month, has spoken extensively about her time working on the quick meals chain.
She stated whereas she grew up in a center class household she “became working class” working there, arguing there was “humility” within the job she took on at 16, describing days cleansing bogs and “flipping burgers”.
Sir Keir Starmer mocked Ms Badenoch in a serious speech yesterday, telling the viewers in Buckinghamshire: “It’s great to be here at the iconic Pinewood Studios: the spiritual home of Britain’s film industry.
“You already know, the chief of the Opposition thinks in case you do a few shifts in McDonald’s, you turn out to be working class. So by that logic, if I preserve coming again right here – I might but be the following James Bond.”
Politics newest: Starmer assembly with UK and Irish leaders
In a speech on Thursday night, Ms Badenoch stated Sir Keir would “never have dared” to joke about working in McDonalds if she was a “left-wing activist”.
“The truth is that the left are not that interested in ethnic minorities except as a tool to fight their battles against the right,” she stated.
“The truth is, simply this morning the British prime minister made a joke about how I labored at McDonald’s.
“He would never have dared to do that, if I was a left-wing activist.
“And if a Conservative prime minister had made these feedback a few black social gathering chief, they’d have been referred to as a racist and requested to resign.”
When asked by reporters about Ms Badenoch’s comments on Friday afternoon, the prime minister’s spokesperson said he had “nothing so as to add”.
Throughout the Tory management marketing campaign, the place she competed towards now shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick, Ms Badenoch stated her time at McDonald’s was the “first time I ever interacted properly with people who didn’t come from the sort of background that I came from”.
“I grew up in a middle class family, but I became working class when I was 16 working at McDonald’s,” she advised Chopper’s Political Podcast with Christopher Hope.
“Just understanding how many people there were single parents, and they were working there to make ends meet.
“There is a humility there as properly. You needed to wash bogs, there have been no particular cleaners coming in. You needed to wash bogs, you needed to flip burgers, you needed to deal with cash.”