AP
British Conservatives have a new leader
But why does a party that won 121 out of 650 seats in the House of Commons — less than a fifth — need a leader? Isn’t it time to dissolve it and put an end to Conservatism in Britain? Such sentiments were also voiced, albeit in the heat of the moment, in the immediate aftermath of the general election, which the Tories lost with the loudest bang in history. After the battle for Rishi Sunak’s position, the party elections were won by Kemi Badenoch.
She will now become leader of the opposition and form a shadow cabinet, although given the balance of power, its task will most likely be reduced to communicating its ideas more or less correctly and effectively to the media, rather than engaging in effective struggle on the benches of Westminster.
Badenoch belongs to the extreme right wing of the party, which means that her election can only mean an even greater shift of the Tories to the right. No one is hiding the fact that Badenoch will defend «the true values of British conservatism», as was stated more than once from the podium.
She is the first black woman to hold such a high party position. Born in London at a private clinic in Wimbledon, her Nigerian parents could afford it — her father owned a private clinic in Lagos, and her mother eventually became an academic. But then the family moved back to Nigeria.
Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke Badenoch also went to a privileged school in Nigeria, and her family was English-speaking, of the West African Yoruba tribe. But even in boarding school, she had to get up at five, cut endless grass, and get calluses.
In the early 1990s, the country’s economy collapsed; in 1995, Nigeria was even expelled from the British Commonwealth because the military dictatorship in power had resorted to executions. There was no electricity, they had to walk a mile and a half for water, and that’s when her parents remembered that 16-year-old Olukemi almost had a British passport in her pocket.
There was no grass to cut at the London college, but to the new student’s surprise, the teenagers there cursed a lot and used another kind of grass for other purposes. Kemi Badenoch is trained as a computer systems engineer.
The fact that she is an immigrant and also black has allowed her, once involved in politics, to freely discuss race issues in the UK.
«Badenoch is useful to the Conservative Party in that she can easily challenge the widespread left-wing notion of racism in Britain, while at the same time she herself cannot be accused of racism», wrote her biographer Lord Ashcroft in a book published earlier this year.
For example, in a speech in the House of Commons in the summer of 2020, she condemned the teaching of «critical race theory» in English schools. This is an American doctrine from the 1970s that suggests that racism doesn’t just come out of nowhere, isn’t an invention, a whim, or a prejudice, but is the result of various factors — social, cultural, etc. She was quick to criticize the Black Lives Matter movement. Her position on immigration is expected to be quite consistent towards tightening, although the Tories were already not welcoming uninvited guests.
She is equally outspoken on issues of gender identity.
In 2022, there was even a scandal at the famous Tavistock Clinic when Badenoch tried to meet with a transgender patient; she was not allowed in and as a result the scandalous clinic was closed and Kemi received applause from feminists.
In general, she is prone to sharp moves. At a Conservative Party conference, she suddenly declared that maternity benefits were «excessive». In England, they amount to £185 (220 euros) per week, and the UK lags behind OECD countries on this indicator. Such a statement, especially from a sitting minister on the eve of a general election, is pure suicide. Then, in the same speech, she suddenly claims that 10 percent of British civil servants work so badly that they «should be in jail».
«Many of them may want to do a good job, but they just move from department to department», she said. «They don’t develop systemic, professional expertise, and when they do start to develop it, they are immediately lured away by the private sector, which offers higher salaries. I think that is a sign of a broken system».
Therefore, Badenoch vaguely stated that she intends to «put some things back together that are out of sight». Most likely she is referring to the rules of financial discipline and the procedures for appointing experts to the civil service. She doesn’t have a coherent program as such, to which she replied: «The party knows what I’m doing».
Therefore, in the field of foreign policy, Badenoch’s preferences are probably as vague as everything on Albion, as is usually believed. At least her views on the actions in Ukraine and Israel are clear.
«I believe that Ukraine and Israel are fighting for the same values that the West is defending», Badenoch said in a comment to The Sunday Times, «that is, for the ideas of liberal democracy. They are, in a sense, mediators, defenders of our way of life. And if we don’t support them now, to make it easier for ourselves, it will cost us even more later».
After the election defeat, the Conservative Party is, if not on the verge of civil war, at least actively bubbling. Badenoch now faces two tasks — to unite all the right-wingers around her even more right-wing faction and come up with a calming and acceptable solution for everyone, and secondly, to reach the national level by offering new reforms to all Britons, especially in the areas of immigration, which has already become a sore point, health care, which is gradually going to pieces, and the economy. In other words, on all those points where the Labour Party had an advantage in the last elections.
The question is whether it is possible to do both. And if so, how and in what order.