Right-wing British Twitter, or X as it is now known, is flooded with culture-war memes about the Netflix show Adolescence, in something of a backlash to the breathless, near-fawning reception that has greeted the fictional show about male youth’s susceptibility to online misogyny.
Amusing in their preposterousness, the memes include images of police cars pointing loudspeakers out their windows at lone passing walkers: “Have you watched Adolescence yet?” blares an officer. Another shows Pope Francis recently greeting King Charles. He asks the same question. Some images show weary newborn babies being asked the question immediately upon their arrival into the world.
My personal favourite was the meme about William Frederick Eames, a 19th-century painter whose most famous work imagined a scene from the 17th century English civil war. In the painting, a royalist boy is questioned by parliament-supporting Roundhead soldiers. Instead of asking the boy, as the title of the famous old painting suggests, “And When Did You Last See Your Father?”, inevitably they ask him if he had has seen Adolescence on Netflix.
Life has imitated art in recent weeks for Tory leader Kemi Badenoch. Two weeks ago, she was grilled on LBC radio by Nick Ferrari over her avowed failure to watch Adolescence, an omission that the radio presenter simply could not get his head around.
“The idea that you would have swerved this programme is unthinkable,” said Ferrari to the bemused Tory leader. “It’s not just the ignorance and the sort of blithe arrogance that’s offensive, it’s the revelling in it.”
Last week on BBC Breakfast, Badenoch received much the same treatment from presenter Naga Munchetty, who is particularly disliked by many on Britain’s right wing. She lobbed the inevitable Adolescence query at the Tory leader about whether she had seen the show.
“No I haven’t. [And] I probably won’t,” replied Badenoch. “It’s a film on Netflix and most of my time right now is spent visiting the country.”
Badenoch and her supporters say she is being judged unfairly and too quickly, less than six months into the job and after one of her party’s most historic electoral thrashings at the hands of Starmer. She is focused on rebuilding party structures, they say
Munchetty visibly squirmed in discomfort at the Conservative politician’s television viewing habits and pressed her further on her interest in topics such as misogyny and male violence.
“I think that those are all important issues, and those are issues that I’ve been talking about for a long time,” said Badenoch. “But in the same way that I don’t need to watch Casualty to know what’s going on in the NHS, I don’t need to watch a specific Netflix drama to understand what’s going on.”
It was a good comeback by Badenoch, all the more noticeable because her comments about Adolescence highlighted the infrequency with which the Tory leader is cutting through in coverage of British politics. It was more or less the only time anyone has paid attention to her in weeks.
Badenoch won the leadership of the Tory party last year partly on her perceived ability to garner coverage. When she was business secretary in former prime minister Rishi Sunak’s government, her every utterance was pored over by the media. She had a reputation as combative and incisive.
It was expected that she would expose the relatively wooden Labour leader Keir Starmer, Sunak’s successor in Downing Street, at the dais each Wednesday at prime minister’s questions. Even her own MPs say privately that, so far, she has failed even to do that.
Starmer is easily besting Badenoch in parliament. She is also being outshone on her right flank by Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK. Even Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats party who eyes further gains from the Tories in the southwest of England May 1st’s local elections, appears to have momentum compared with the Tory leader.
“Their [the Liberal Democrats] increase will come at the expense of the Conservatives,” said Tory peer and elections guru Robert Hayward, as he briefed journalists on the upcoming locals vote.
There are about 1,600 council seats up for grabs across 24 local authorities. The Tories are defending about 1,100 of them – most of the council areas where voters are going to the polls are in traditional Tory areas where the party, then under Boris Johnson, was on a Covid post-vaccine roll-out high and voters still had some optimism. The Tories are expected to lose the bulk of their seats.
Badenoch and her supporters say she is being judged unfairly and too quickly, less than six months into the job and after one of her party’s most historic electoral thrashings at the hands of Starmer. She is focused on rebuilding party structures, they say.
Yet if her low-wattage appearances continue and if the Tories are shellacked even worse than feared in the local elections, some in her own party are speculating that she might not even see out the year. If she is ousted, at least she will have plenty of time for Netflix.
