![The actor has entered a row with Conservative politician Kemi Badenoch](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2024/06/26/TELEMMGLPICT000367062326_17194223136870_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqbuu3lMjlOVI7nfawZd7z3SXyhYt6a05wMSuAPk1_o1s.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Actor or activist – who does David Tennant think he is?
The actor has long criticised the Conservative Party, but have his recent comments on Kemi Badenoch crossed the line?
![The actor has entered a row with Conservative politician Kemi Badenoch](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2024/06/26/TELEMMGLPICT000367062326_17194223136870_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqbuu3lMjlOVI7nfawZd7z3SXyhYt6a05wMSuAPk1_o1s.jpeg?imwidth=680)
With just days to go until the General Election, the most ill-tempered political spat of the week has not been between the leaders vying to be prime minister, nor the Tories collapsing from infighting, but a more unlikely pair: Kemi Badenoch, the Minister for Women and Equalities, and the Scottish actor David Tennant.
At the British LGBT Awards on June 21, Tennant won a Celebrity Ally award. In his acceptance speech, delivered to cheers and applause, he said that “until we wake up and Kemi Badenoch doesn’t exist any more – I don’t wish ill of her, I just wish her to shut up – whilst we do live in this world, I am honoured to receive this.” Badenoch was swift to reply.
“I will not shut up,” she wrote on X. “I will not be silenced by men who prioritise applause from Stonewall over the safety of women and girls.
“A rich, lefty, white male celebrity so blinded by ideology he can’t see the optics of attacking the only black woman in government by calling publicly for my existence to end.
“Tennant is one of Labour’s celebrity supporters. This is an early example of what life will be like if they win.”
![Kemi Badenoch swiftly responded to Tennant's speech, saying 'I will not shut up'](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2024/06/26/TELEMMGLPICT000382577933_17194233925230_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq1R6vEcAEgwWmk1bI12AH_5boX2qDlcs-t9ykGR1-SMM.jpeg?imwidth=350)
That was not the end of it. James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, called on Tennant to apologise. On X he posted: “I’m not sure David understands the irony of trying to silence the voice of the most senior Black female politician in the UK’s history, in the name of ‘defending’ a minority community.”
This morning the Prime Minister joined the chorus. “Freedom of speech is the most powerful feature of our democracy,” he wrote on X. “If you’re calling for women to shut up and wishing they didn’t exist, you are the problem.”
And just last night, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said David Tennant should have been more respectful in his criticism.
Speaking today, he said: “I think in politics, as in life, it’s really important that we are able to robustly disagree with others.
“Obviously, that happens a lot in the general election campaign, but we should do it with respect for everybody involved in that robust discussion.
“I wouldn’t have engaged in the way that he did. I think it’s right that we have these robust discussions, but we must do it respectfully.”
At the heart of the row is a Tory election pledge to make biological sex a protected characteristic under the Equality Act. At present, gender reassignment is protected. Badenoch has been the figurehead for the proposed changes. In an interview with LBC earlier this month, she said: “This is about protecting those who are vulnerable, it is not about stopping trans people from having privacy and dignity.” She added that “changing your clothes doesn’t change who you are”.
Tennant, 53, and his wife Georgia, 39, are staunch supporters of LGBTQ+ rights. Earlier this week they posted a series of pictures of themselves and three of their five children, Wilfred, 10, Doris, eight, and Birdie, four, dressed up for a school Pride celebrations. Tennant wore a trans rights t-shirt bearing the slogan “You Will Have To Go Through Me,” holding an Intersex Inclusive Pride flag.
![The actor, dressed for Pride celebrations](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2024/06/26/TELEMMGLPICT000383451544_17194225865120_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqU2OcGw4mv9yCz78okQSYvu1LDe8z-wcErm9lMzAKJcc.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Last year for the press day of the second series of Good Omens, he wore a t-shirt which read “Leave trans kids alone, you absolute freaks”. And in his acceptance speech last week, Tennant said: “I am thrilled to be here and to be a part of this night – Pride is very important in our house, it’s a family affair, we have skin in the game, so this event tonight thrills me.”
In June 2023, talking about LGBTQ+ actors playing LGBTQ+ characters in an interview with The Telegraph Magazine, Tennant said “you have to protect those spaces for actors who come from those communities.”
Paddling in politics is more or less a rite of passage for actors above a certain level of celebrity. Among these slow-moving herds of leftish luvvies, Tennant cuts a refreshing figure: a man with unforced courage of his convictions. However, to his detractors, apparently now including Rishi Sunak, he is more activist than actor, privileged and outwardly liberal but guilty of attempting to silence views with which he disagrees.
“David Tennant is entitled to his opinions,” says Miriam Cates, the Conservative candidate for Penistone and Stocksbridge, “but to say of a sitting member of Parliament, a government minister, that it would be better if she didn’t exist, is unacceptable. If you want people to be politicians, you have to treat them with respect. I think it was dehumanising.
“Unlike some trendy Left-wing politics, which doesn’t have any meaningful impact on people’s lives, this does, particularly on women and girls,” she adds.
“People on the Left say it’s a culture war that people on the right are stoking. The opposite is true. People on the Right want to preserve our culture, which is that there is a different between men and women and societies throughout history have kept women and men apart in order to protect women and girls. It’s not a minor thing.”
Over his career he has frequently demonstrated a harder political edge than you might expect, and than his agents and publicists might have advised. After coming up through small parts on TV and roles in theatre, especially Shakespeare, Tennant became a superstar when he was cast as the 10th Doctor Who in 2005. There may not be a more cuddly role on TV, or one less appropriate for a firebrand. Another former Doctor, Tom Baker, made a point of saying he hated both the Tories and the Labour Party; the closest he has come to agit-prop is saying he missed Waitrose during lockdown.
![After an extensive career in theatre, Tennant landed the role of Doctor Who in 2005](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2024/06/26/TELEMMGLPICT000000282232_17194232093270_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqW80_6q-D5r806BbIJE5ueb84G0t18FvveHns56foMac.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Tennant has never been deterred. His father was a Church of Scotland Minister and he has said that “organised religion gave me a good moral compass”. In 2005 he appeared in a party political broadcast for Labour. “I’ll be voting Labour this time because the alternative is a disaster area,” he said. It was not his last appearance in a campaign. In 2010, he provided a voiceover for a publicity video called The Road Ahead. Over stirring string music he said: “We’ve been through tough times, but by staying on the right road we can make Britain the country we all want it to be, to build a future that is fair for all of us.” In 2012 he introduced Ed Miliband on stage at the Labour Party Conference.
Three years later, he lent his voice to another election broadcast for Ed Miliband’s campaign, titled: “A decent society looks after its people.” “This election is a choice, between the Tories’ failing plan and Labour’s better plan for working families,” he said. “Britain succeeds when working people succeed. Vote Labour on Thursday May 7th.”
He was muted during the Corbyn years, telling an interviewer that he wouldn’t do a broadcast for Labour, “given its reluctance to oppose Brexit,” which he had called a “sh---show”. Asked if he was a fan of Corbyn, he said he was a fan of the party. He even refused to say whether he would even vote for them.
![Tennant with his wife Georgia, who has also voiced her support for LGBT rights](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2024/06/26/TELEMMGLPICT000383460804_17194233178530_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqN7RmjNcddAdyVLUN4gxSd0RseXgceay8NGib1t_fJ-0.jpeg?imwidth=350)
“I don’t know what they offer us,” he said. “You just hope for someone to have a bit of clarity. You hope for a clever person.” In the end he held his nose for long enough to vote for them, but said the defeat was “disappointingly predictable.”
The clever person arrived, as far as he was concerned, in the shape of Sir Keir Starmer the following year. “We’ve got a clever grownup in the room, which makes the other side look as ridiculous as they are,” he said in 2020. “Let’s hope he can fulfil his early promise.”
He remained neutral in the run-up to the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, saying that as he no longer lived there his views were no longer important. By 2017, however, he had changed his mind. “I’m now at the point where I think if Scotland goes again for a referendum, they should go independent,” he told The Times, adding that “politically, I think we are in for quite a dark time.” What changed in the meantime? Brexit, naturally. In the days after the EU referendum, Tennant mocked Donald Trump for praising the Brexit decision. He had previously joined the chorus mocking Michael Gove’s “enough of experts” line as a “political lowpoint.” In a section on Have I Got News for You mocking Tory politicians for being obsessed with the union flag, Tennant had three enormous saltires drop down behind him, like the party political broadcast of a Scots despot.
![The actor has now voiced his support for Scottish independence](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2024/06/26/TELEMMGLPICT000383466753_17194224938080_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqP5sXVTMWl1ImcfKG0KdPLjFUrThmLCdukfeQU8eho6A.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Since Doctor Who, as Tennant has taken on roles in fantasy Good Omens, detectives (Broadchurch) and domestic thrillers (Deadwater Fell), as well as a chilling turn as the serial killer Dennis Nilsen in 2020’s Des, the actor has managed to keep up with an array of other causes as well as gender rights and politics, some of which are more common parts of an actor’s suite of beliefs. He has a podcast, David Tennant Does a Podcast With… in which he sits down with various celebrity guests, including Gordon Brown, for an hour of amiable chitchat.
He has been a longstanding advocate on mental health, presenting documentaries and supporting countless initiatives. A therapist helped him when he “wasn’t coping at all” with the sudden overnight celebrity brought about by Doctor Who. During lockdown, he worried about whether theatres would survive. He supports the BBC. He voiced a video for the charity Theirworld about the power of education, especially in the climate crisis. “Now more than ever we need to ensure that every child can learn and thrive,” he said, “and to raise a generation who can protect our planet better too.”
If Tennant is more vocal than some of his peers, he has a comrade in his friend Michael Sheen, with whom he stars in Good Omens as well as in the improvised lockdown hit Staged. Sheen, an ardent Welsh nationalist, makes Tennant look like Tom Baker. He is as known for his campaigns – on everything from high-cost credit agreements to local journalism to renaming Welsh national parks – as for his note-perfect performances as Tony Blair, David Frost or Brian Clough. He has even called himself a “not-for-profit actor”, a line Tennant has yet to cross.
![Michael Sheen and David Tennant, co-stars in the hit series Good Omens](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2024/06/26/TELEMMGLPICT000197849422_17194226015530_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqSgRwmBZjdlJlkVUEs0KQlZeMsCdU_V1K_8NO_uXnfj8.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Whatever the actors’ profitability, neither Sheen nor Tennant’s positions seem to have been any impediment to their careers. Sheen recently finished a long run as Aneurin Bevan in Nye at the National Theatre. Tennant has just voiced a character in Disney+’s new Star Wars series, Ahsoka, and will star in the upcoming Jilly Cooper adaptation, Rivals.
Compare their serene progress to the fortunes of Laurence Fox, another actor who dared to air strong political opinions. As a graduate of Rada, scion of an acting dynasty and star of detective drama Lewis, for a time Fox seemed set for a career as glittering as either of the other men. Now his acting is forgotten, his name instead associated with extreme political views, eccentric interventions and scandal. In acting-land, some views remain more palatable than others. Tennant’s comments to Kemi Badenoch may have incurred the censure of the Prime Minister, but few casting directors will be striking his name from their lists.
In an interview in 2019, Tennant said, “You have to be careful about presuming that because you’re on telly, your opinion counts. I’m not an expert, so I’m not going to be profligate about my opinions.”
He has hardly heeded his own advice, but that’s the Time Lords’ great gift. They pop up here and there, frolicking through time and space, but their Tardis dematerialises before anything sticks to them.