The Guardian view on Kemi Badenoch’s speech: following the path of denial, delusion and defeat | Editorial


Kemi Badenoch has survived her first Conservative conference as leader, which is an accomplishment of sorts. On every other metric she is failing. She has not given a plausible explanation for her party’s defeat in last year’s election, and without one she has little prospect of recovering lost supporters or recruiting new ones.

When she speaks of the Tories’ past record, her analysis is shallow and disingenuous. When she promises a better future, her prescriptions are outmoded and misguided. On the explanation for her present predicament – dismal poll ratings, a shrinking and demoralised membership, a trickle of defections to Reform UK that might yet become a flood – she is silent.

Mrs Badenoch’s keynote speech closing the conference on Wednesday was a mix of denial, delusion and obsolete dogma. She bemoaned the state of Britain’s economy and public services with no hint of contrition for the harmful effect that 14 years of Conservative government might have had on the state of the nation.

The twin causes of decline that she asserts with monomaniacal fervour are a bloated state and excess immigration. Her formula for renewal is to reduce public spending, fire a third of all civil servants, reverse all of Labour’s revenue-raising tax measures, cut other taxes, and repudiate Britain’s international treaty obligations as a precursor to mass deportation of unwelcome foreigners. She would also abandon Britain’s statutory commitments to reduce carbon emissions.

It is a programme moulded precisely to the contours of a post-Brexit Conservative comfort zone. It contains no original thought. Nor is there any recognition that the world of 2025 requires policy solutions distinct from the ones that the radical right wing of the Tory party has been advocating for decades, and that were tried in office with disastrous consequences.

Somewhat pathetically, Mrs Badenoch presents this stale rehash of old ideas as the product of her own diligent diagnosis of contemporary challenges facing Britain. This is a necessary fiction, because she cannot admit that her original timeline for policy development – nothing to be fixed before 2027 – has been abandoned. She has been bounced into premature announcements by colleagues who dread losing more votes and colleagues to Reform UK.

The absence of sustained criticism of Nigel Farage’s party was the most revealing aspect of Mrs Badenoch’s speech. She mentioned the Reform leader only once, and in the context of public spending, a peripheral feature of his agenda.

A leader who was serious about rehabilitating the Tories as a centre-right party that aspires to govern responsibly, and on behalf of all British citizens, would have addressed the rise of xenophobic nationalism that Mr Farage’s poll rating presages. But how could she do that when the same toxic tide is engulfing her own party? She cannot even rebuke Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, for complaining about his experience in a multi-ethnic Birmingham suburb on the grounds that he did not encounter “another white face”.

Mr Jenrick’s comments, reported by the Guardian, were made earlier this year. At this week’s Tory conference he was striving to avoid undermining Mrs Badenoch, not because he has given up thoughts of replacing her but because potential supporters find his conspicuous posturing to that end off-putting.

Besides, there is no need for ambitious rivals to destabilise a leader who is so adept at self-sabotage. A disastrous conference might have hastened defenestration. Instead, she is condemned to continue a while longer, recycling old ideas, hiding from present problems, and looking thoroughly beaten by the task of returning the Conservatives to future relevance.



Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.