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From immigrant roots to Tory leader — can Kemi Badenoch save her beleaguered party?

2 Dec 2024

The unlikely rise of Kemi Badenoch to lead Britain’s Conservative Party — a Nigerian who, at age 16, returned to Britain, where she was born — proves that migration works.

Donald Trump’s election overshadowed Kemi Badenoch’s emergence as the leader of the Conservative Party of Britain. Yet, no one gets the worst political job in one of the world’s oldest political parties and walks away quietly.

This is especially the case when the candidate is a straight-talking, ideological woman and a child of an immigrant in a largely conservative society.

It was not a mistake that a section of the British press framed the last contest for the Tory leadership as one of the worst match-ups in recent times, if not in its history.

Here was Badenoch, a black woman (who doesn’t like to be described in racial terms), in a contest against three men, two of them white, and the last man standing, Robert Jenrick, was snow white. Still, all, including Badenoch, were caricatured as the miserable, surviving heirs of a once-illustrious political party.

Like Trump, like Kemi?

Some have compared Badenoch with Trump, which is nonsense. The only way she resembles Trump is in her plain speaking, which is a rare quality in politics. Comparing Badenoch to Trump for depth, intellect, or character is a disservice to demagoguery for which Trump has no equal.

Conservative Party Leader Kemi Badenoch arrives ahead of her appearance before the Post Office Inquiry, on November 11, 2024 in London. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Although she had only been in the House of Commons for seven years, her rise was forged in the extraordinary turmoil of British politics in the past decade. She held junior cabinet positions under Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. She has been in politics since she was 25 and unsuccessfully contested a seat in the London Assembly in 2012.

Two years ago, after Johnson’s fall, Badenoch contested the Tory leadership position but lost to Truss, whose eventual reign was as brief and chaotic as her competence. In love, as in politics, familiarity ultimately undermines affection. That partly explains why the Tories lost the last general election long before Labour won.

However, the killer punch for the Tories was not this natural course of affairs but the rise of Johnson and his succession by Truss, two of the most incompetent Tory leaders in decades.

Scapegoats and guardian angels

More than any leader in modern British history, these two dragged the Tory party to the left at the expense of its traditional base, giving ground to right-wing clowns like Nigel Farage and others. But the besotted Tory press did not see that — or they pretended they didn’t — until, despite Rishi Sunak’s best efforts at Tory house cleaning, the party suffered one of its worst defeats from years of accumulated rot.

It’s to Badenoch’s credit that, despite that setback and criticisms of her political views — some deserved — she gave it another shot and has emerged as the first black leader of one of the world’s oldest political parties.

But her foes in the culture brigade and the furious guardian angels of the Tory legacy won’t let her sit before fetching the long knives. They are upset. How did the party of the durable Winston Churchill, whose leadership saved his country and the world from Hitler, fall this low?

What has become of the party of Margaret Thatcher, who transformed the UK economy with her free-market policies and laid the foundation for the most extended spell of Tory rule? How can Badenoch, a poor imitation of Thatcher’s ideals even if she claims her as an icon, save the Tories from what looks like a long winter?

‘Kemikaze’

In a baptism of fire after Badenoch’s second Prime Minister’s Question Time, John Crace of The Guardian wrote that she was “turning out to be the gift that keeps on giving… to the Labour party… Behind her rather patronising, condescending façade, there’s a largely empty interior.

“She is riddled with levitas. Her self-confidence is in inverse proportion to her abilities. She’s not nearly as bright as she thinks she is, and quite where she got the idea she is a brilliant performer in the Commons is anyone’s guess. It’s Liz Truss levels of delusion.”

Yet, this was the same Badenoch who, two months before she was elected Tory leader, was described by Andrew Marr, author and respected UK political journalist, as “scorchingly clever”. This quality, which is supposed to be her strength, is why she has attracted some of the most scathing criticism, with some describing her as someone who can start a fight in an empty room.

What she stands for

Badenoch is something of a shock to a largely conservative society where reticence, class and race play big. She doesn’t believe in being identified by race, for example, and has argued that identity politics only scratches the surface of why nations fail.

She argues that just as the cloak does not make the monk, to say someone is black or white, gay or straight, does not explain who they are, but lazy politicians stoke race and identity because it saves them the real work of fixing society.

She doesn’t believe in “multiculturalism” either, insisting that cultures make sense not in their numbers or variety but in what each contributes to building and advancing a society. Many would find Badenoch’s position unsettling, being the child of an immigrant herself, and for a country like Britain, which has prided itself on being Europe’s melting pot and multicultural capital.

Still on Sowell

I can’t entirely agree with Badenoch that multiculturalism and social cohesion are mutually exclusive, that denial of identity politics wishes it away, or that, as she loves to argue, Britain didn’t profit from colonial rule.

Interestingly, in Migrations and Cultures: A World View, Thomas Sowell, one of those Badenoch claims shaped her political views, makes a strong point about the role of migrations and relocations in redistributing skills, knowledge and development worldwide.

Whatever Donald Trump and the new right are teaching the world, migration by conquest, treaty, geography, or the sheer human desire for a better life is a fact of history. The unlikely rise of Badenoch to power — a Nigerian girl who, at age 16, returned to Britain, where she was born — proves that migration works. However, she might argue that the problem is not migration per se, but the immigrants’ unwillingness to integrate with host communities.

My disagreement with the new Tory leader on this point does not suggest even remote support for the vicious attacks she has received from a section of the press in Britain or those in her native country who think she must bend a knee to those who want to exploit her Nigerian heritage before she has even settled down.

Not as brittle as they think

As I wrote, when Sunak emerged as Tory leader (and closet xenophobes may be squeamish all they want), the rise of a racially diverse and unconventional crop of politicians, not only in terms of cultural background but also the ideas they represent, is a good thing for politics — whether in Britain or elsewhere.

Sunak lost to Keir Starmer, not necessarily because Labour was very popular — Starmer won with less than 20% of eligible voters’ votes — but because the particularly catastrophic years of Johnson and Truss had eroded trust in politics.

Badenoch has a lot of work ahead of her, but she has the competence, character, and energy to do it despite the snipers at home and abroad. You don’t get this far in the furnace of British politics by exercising levitas. DM

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