Kemi Badenoch: The Purist

ANY PUBLICITY IS GOOD publicity when you are in the pits, certainly after a historic electoral defeat. With Kemi Badenoch as their new leader, the Tories are assured of one thing: they will get public attention, at least for the near future. Badenoch, the first black person, let alone the first black woman, to lead a Westminster party, has opportunity and challenge gift-wrapped for her given that her election dovetailed Labour’s budget.

Born Olukemi Adegoke in London in 1980 to a doctor father and academic mother, Badenoch sees herself as a first-generation immigrant who grew up in Nigeria till she turned 16. An MP for only seven years before winning the Conservative leadership by one of the narrowest margins—two-thirds of Tory MPs did not vote for her—Badenoch is labelled, not exactly complimentarily, a neo-Thatcherite, far to the right of the last several Conservative prime ministers. She despises identity politics, calls herself “anti-woke” and a gender-critical feminist. One of the Tory government walkouts when Boris Johnson was imploding, but not over “partygate”, Badenoch has diagnosed the Conservative catastrophe in July’s general election as the fallout of “talk[ing] right, but govern[ing] left”. As business and trade secretary, her budding reputation for straight talk had followed her into government. It is what she would like Tories to adopt as a virtue—“tell the truth” she admonishes her colleagues—and an antidote that would return the party to its roots.

Her first test is the extended aftermath of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ interventionist, high-tax, high-spending budget that is the clearest signal so far of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s directional remedy for the ailing UK economy. Against this, Badenoch argues low tax, small state, largescale deregulation—a shrinking of government which, she reiterates, does not create growth and should get out of the way of business which does.

The Tory rank-and-file love her for now; senior Conservatives like her for the confidence of vision she brings and the political clarity she promises. Perhaps, as has been observed, Britain is returning to a classic left-right politics where both major parties want to rescue and rebuild the economy, but have opposite approaches to the problem.

Yet with Badenoch, it does not end with the economy. Her detractors call her a cultural warrior, another tag she despises. She earned the ire of some friends and all foes when refuting claims of institutional racism in the UK. She is a loud critic of transgender self-certification. She is—and in this she has support from parents across the political divide—opposed to gender-neutral toilets. Needless to say, Badenoch has already had a substantial share of controversy and made a few obvious gaffes. Not a fan of bureaucrats—she challenges the notion that they are quicker and safer decision-makers than politicians—she had once blurted out that some of them ought to be in jail.

The Conservatives, incapable of blocking Labour’s legislation because they do not have enough MPs as Badenoch acknowledges, have got themselves a young and energetic leader who has begun with a direct attack on Starmer during Prime Minister’s Questions on November 6 using her ‘Trump card’. She will doubtless be less clear on policy till she has picked a functioning shadow cabinet. Her medium-term task will be winning back voters the party lost to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. But her immediate challenge is to convince those Tory MPs who did not back her for the leadership. Labour leaders can be furious that their party has only one black cabinet member and no black representation at No 10 among Starmer’s advisers, but Badenoch’s candidness, too, could go too far and land the party in a still bigger mess.

A return to classic free-market, small-state conservatism sounds tempting. However, there is a big risk. It is the failure to recognise that while Starmer’s Labour is now officially post-New Labour, politics (and society) has moved well beyond the inflection point of Thatcherism of old. Can “broken Britain” with declining real incomes, dysfunctional services and capital flight be enthused and then revived by a 45-year-old medicine?

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Sudeep Paul

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