Reform UK Hit By Humiliating X Community Note Over Badenoch Chess Champion Claims

Reform UK have been left red-faced after wrongly accusing Kemi Badenoch of claiming she was Nigeria’s national chess champion when she was just seven years old.

The right-wing party made the claim in a video posted on X on the eve of the Conservative conference in Birmingham.

It said: “Kemi Badenoch said she was Nigeria’s national chess champion at age 7. So we sent a reporter to Nigeria to find out the truth. She lied.”

However, the party was corrected in a community note posted below it.

It said: “Kemi Badenoch did not claim to be Nigeria’s national chess champion.

“In the February 2024 Times interview transcript she said she won ‘a national competition for chess’ at age 7 in Nigeria but immediately clarified ‘there were only two girls who entered’.”

That was confirmed by Victoria Peckham, the journalist who carried out the interview for The Times.

She published a transcript, in which Badenoch said: “Not a lot of girls play chess. I remember when I was seven, I won a national competition for chess.”

Asked if that was in Nigeria, the Tory leader said: “Yes. In 1987.”

Badenoch added: “There were only two girls who entered.”

Meanwhile, a Tory aide accused Reform of “trying to weaponise race” by highlighting the fact that Badenoch grew up in Nigeria.

The source said: “Reform are neck deep in financial scandal, under investigation by the police, and are increasingly trying to weaponise race in British politics.

“Anyone who thought Reform offered something different will rightly be appalled by their descent into a BNP-style race-baiting gutter.”

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