Kemi Badenoch's husband Hamish has one thing in common with Denis Thatcher – but is more like Philip May | Politics News

Kemi Badenoch's husband has one thing in common with Sir Denis Thatcher. Both met their wife when they were Tory activists and their bride-to-be was campaigning for a safe Labor seat.

Hamish Badenoch regularly gave Kemi a ride in his car when she stood as the Tory candidate against Labor's Tessa Jowell in Dulwich and West Norwood in the 2010 general election.

And Denis Thatcher famously gave young Margaret Roberts a lift home to London in his sports car when she was the Tory candidate in Dartford, against whom she stood in the 1950 and 1951 elections.

But the similarity probably ends there. Sir Denis became a national celebrity in his own right, lampooning him in a Dear Bill column in Private Eye and a West End play Who for Denis?

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Hamish Badenoch, however, kept a remarkably low profile, much like the husband of another Tory activist and former prime minister, Sir Philip May, whom his wife Theresa described as her “rock”.

And when it comes to avoiding the limelight, Mr Badenoch is – so far – definitely more Philip May than Denis Thatcher, although the extroverted and endearingly eccentric Sir Denis was an isolated case among the Prime Minister's wives.

But an extremely unusual and remarkable fact about Hamish Badenoch is that, by a bizarre coincidence, he and Kemi were born a year apart in the same hospital, St Teresa's in Wimbledon.

It was partly this coincidence that led to them forming a friendship when he was an activist in the Dulwich and West Norwood Tory Association. He then became her campaign manager.

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“Hamish lived very close to Kemi in Herne Hill and because he had a car and Kemi didn't, he volunteered to pick her up and drop her off when we had meetings,” a former club member revealed in Lord Ashcroft's biography Blue Ambition”.

After serving as head boy at Ampleforth College – the monk-run Roman Catholic boarding school – and Cambridge University, Hamish had a varied early career abroad: as a journalist in Malawi, as a management consultant in Nigeria and as manager of an Avis car rental company in Kenya .

After that and returning to London it was the more traditional Tory background of Barclays Bank and now Deutsche Bank.

But like Kemi, he had political ambitions and in 2005, when he was a councilor in Merton, south London, he campaigned for the Conservatives for the SDLP seat of Foyle in Northern Ireland.

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But things didn't go well. Despite his Scottish Gaelic surname and Irish roots – his mother was born in the Republic of Ireland – he came seventh out of seven candidates, receiving just 132 votes and losing his bail. It was the only time he stood for parliament.

In 2016, the couple were on opposite sides of the EU referendum: she was for Brexit, he was for Remain. Lord Ashcroft quoted a friend who described him as a “Cameron centrist”.

Lord Ashcroft quoted another friend as saying: “Anyone who claims not to understand the One Nation wing of the party is reminded that they wake up next to a Remainer every morning.”

To Kemi stands for the Tory leadershipA friend told Lord Ashcroft: “Hamish and her are like a team. He put her career ahead of his own. If he told her he didn't think her leadership role would work for the family, she wouldn't do it.”

Well, she did and she did it. And when she thanked him in her victory speech and said she couldn't have done it “without you being with me every step of the way,” the lawmakers and activists in the room cheered loudly.

Hamish Badenoch may have shied away from the spotlight until now. But now he was thrown right into it. Even if he hopes to be more Philip May than Denis Thatcher.