Populist Multicultural Party
Kemi Badenoch’s Tories
By Josh White
The Conservative Party finally has a new leader, who is not only the first black woman to lead one of the two parties of government but also a culture warrior and an opponent of identity politics.
Kemi Badenoch has built her reputation among Tories by speaking out against trans rights. This is one of the most potent issues of reactionary cultural discourse in Britain today, but it’s also the top concern of a minority of voters.
This is partly why it’s unclear whether Badenoch will be able to save the Tories from the fate they’ve crafted for themselves over the last decade. Many journalists are betting that this election is a folly for the old party of the right (more on this later).
Of course, Badenoch is still not nearly conservative enough for the far-right supporters of Reform UK. She represents merely the ‘woke’ right for those whose imagination is gripped by Great Replacement Theory.
Badenoch will have to take on much tougher positions to prove herself to voters who think Reform UK better represents them. This could mean calling for a moratorium on immigration, for example.
However, the biggest possible target is the European Court of Human Rights. Badenoch has not backed a policy of leaving the ECHR or reforming the Human Rights Act, but this would be strong red meat for many Reform voters.
Critics have accused Badenoch of being ‘light’ on policy, while her supporters claim she is a conviction politician steeped in ideas. Yet, there is no reason why a combination of both could be valid.
Real Tory Diversity
A devotee of right-wing economist Thomas Sowell, Badenoch has far more fidelity to conservative libertarian ideas than Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson or Theresa May. Sowell has become a cult on the American right for his contrarian takes on racial issues.
Much has been made of Badenoch’s Nigerian roots. If the Conservative leader goes to Downing Street (a big ‘if’), she would be the first prime minister from a former British African colony.
Despite all the talk against identity politics, Tory MPs have celebrated Badenoch’s victory in progressive terms. One of her leadership rivals, James Cleverly, mocked Labour for being “male, pale and stale”.
The paradox is that the Labour Party, the working-class party in all its diversity, has never had a non-white leader—let alone a woman leader. However, most of the party’s diversity is concentrated in its marginal left wing.
Meanwhile, most black and brown Labour MPs are locked outside the Starmer cabinet because they have inconveniently radical politics. Asian women like Zarah Sultana have no influence, while reliable Blair bros like David Lammy have plenty.
By contrast, the Tory right is far more diverse, producing three women leaders and two non-white leaders in less than 10 years. Badenoch is just one prominent example of a black conservative today.
However, this is far from representative of Black Britain. The class politics of Tory diversity allow the super-rich and the upwardly mobile to take their place in the Conservative establishment.
Examples of this range from Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman to Kwasi Kwarteng and Badenoch herself. The role of the formerly colonial Asian middle class is one part of this, but the rising African middle class is another.
Liberal identity politics is insufficient for drawing a line between representation and the substance of ideology. Diversity is no longer the key to a left-wing future than homogeneity in pre-multicultural Britain.
The sad truth is that the rise of multiculturalism has not been a demographic obstacle to national chauvinism. And yet many rightists are convinced that the left supports mass immigration to create an electoral base for its agenda.
Reform UK has grown even though Britain is more multicultural than ever. Nigel Farage and Richard Tice can play on white anxiety and resentment all they like, but they need the post-Windrush dispensation to do so.
Revenge of the Populists
It was always likely that the new Tory leader – whether it was Badenoch or not – that the result would be a far more right-wing populist leadership. Like Starmer in 2020, Badenoch’s mandate is to win power by any means necessary.
Many mainstream pundits say the Tories have just lost the next election. I wouldn’t be certain because the pundits thought Theresa May was the new Thatcher. That was less than a year before she crumbled during the 2017 election.
The same pundits thought Johnson would reign for 10 years. Many of them believed Liz Truss (and then Rishi Sunak) could salvage the Tory Party’s fortunes despite the Truss moron premium.
The Conservative Party may screw up its chance at a comeback by 2029. However, the next general election is Labour’s to lose. The Starmer project is already looking very rickety despite its large number of MPs.
Labour and the Conservatives are competing for a small share of the national vote. Reform is the biggest obstacle for the Tories to overcome to make a comeback while losing centre-right voters is a much smaller problem.
What we’ve seen over the last decade suggests that the next election may be lost by one side rather than won by any party. Labour’s share of the vote could fall by 2%, and the party could lose its majority if the centre and far right coalesce behind one platform.
Even if Conservative voters do not reconverge behind Badenoch, the party could negotiate a post-election deal with Reform UK. Both sides will deny this is a realistic possibility, but the Tories have a long record of cutting such deals.
This is the same party that has forged pacts with the Liberal Democrats and the Democratic Unionist Party when it suited its agenda. And the Reform leaders are not exactly consistent in their rejectionism.
Nigel Farage has admitted he was in talks with Sunak about a deal before the last election. In 2019, he also cut a deal to support Boris Johnson’s bid to “get Brexit done.”
It’s possible to imagine a hung Parliament in five years, where Labour lost its majority, but the Tories didn’t win either. Farage would be able to play kingmaker with the Conservatives prepared to meet him on most of his demands.
Even if Kemi Badenoch self-destructs in a few months, she may be a transitional figure for the Conservative Party to regain its bearings after its terrible defeat in the last election. The direction of travel is clear: populism, forwards!
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Photograph courtesy of the Conservative Party. Published under a Creative Commons license.