I can’t be the only woman who found Badenoch’s attack on Reeves chilling

Is he mansplaining to you, by the way? Is he mansplaining? Do you want help? Would you like some help?” came the taunt from Kemi Badenoch during her response to Rachel Reeves’s Budget, after she saw Keir Starmer muttering something in the chancellor’s ear.

When Badenoch had to give Reeves her formal title, “the Right Honourable Lady”, she spat the words across the floor of the House. It was a mark of contempt for Reeves, whom Badenoch had also accused of “wallowing in self-pity and whining” about misogyny.

“Let me explain to the chancellor, woman to woman: people out there aren’t complaining because she’s female,” she continued, “they’re complaining because she’s utterly incompetent. Real equality means being held to the same standards as everyone else.”

In the grown-up world of women, we don’t all have to hug each other as sisters. We can disagree on the treatment of wealth, welfare – even the milkshake tax. There was no obligation to offer Reeves sympathy for misogyny. But the all-out attack from Badenoch was vicious and wince-inducing – even unconservative. At one point, she put on a high, whiny voice, pretending to be Reeves: “‘I interrupt your Cheerios to bring you this message about income tax.’”

What Badenoch was signalling in her attack was, firstly, that she is stronger than Reeves; that all this “mansplaining” stuff just bounces off her, that she has no problem navigating it.

The second message was to old-fashioned male voters – and indeed a decent proportion of women – that she has no truck with this feminist talk: each for themselves; muscle through. She’s one of the lads.

But it was so patronising at times that all Badenoch achieved was to undermine some of her perfectly legitimate criticisms of the Budget.

Instead, in her display of contempt for Reeves, Badenoch effectively told her own tribe: it’s fine to speak to women with disdain. That, to me, is asking for trouble. What would Badenoch do if one of her own backbenchers came to her complaining of the same? Would she slap her down and tell her to man up?

This kind of women-hating-women rhetoric has emerged in Trumpian culture, where being on the side of the macho man became a badge of honour for a certain kind of American woman.

I hold little truck with the idea of unquestioning “solidarity” among women, in which every woman is a victim who must be treated with tenderness. Indeed, when I founded a women’s talks group called The Trouble Club, it was with the explicit mission that women should argue with each other – respectfully – about areas of their expertise. Reeves was an early guest about a decade ago.

Arguing on the issues is a world apart from telling another woman that her observation about her own treatment is invalid, pathetic or weak. Women are still entitled to say how the world treats them. Had they not spoken up, we wouldn’t have the vote, equal pay, or the MeToo movement. Does Badenoch want all that razed to the ground?

The Conservatives have relied on an honourable reputation for fiscal conservatism and free speech. The first was blown apart by Liz Truss. (Badenoch would be surprised at how many of her own team disparaged her on the basis of her sex alone – they could have just stuck to economics.) On free speech, it is the ability to describe society as you see it. The person who has shut that down, through insulting language, is Badenoch.

Reeves framed this Budget as part of her resistance to misogyny. But it is Badenoch who has turned the argument into one about anti-feminism. Good luck with that when the men in the grey suits turn up.