Main Edition
US
FR
November 4, 2024 - 1:00pm
“Mummy won!” Conservative Party members seem pleased with their new leader, and determined to both notice and to not notice the fact that she is not a white man. Kemi Badenoch, meanwhile, has positioned herself as the candidate of sensible, equal-opportunities modern British conservatism, with no time for woke nonsense or transgender posturing.
She has promised to change the Equality Act to make clear that transgender-identified men can be excluded from women’s spaces. And following her election as leader she made what sounded like a firm stand for a colour-blind British politics, telling the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that she looks forward to a time when “the colour of your skin is no more remarkable than the colour of your eyes or the colour of your hair”.
What is less clear, though, is whether Badenoch really is the leader who will transcend identity politics — or if that’s even possible. For her election both affirms the pluralism of post-Blair, mass-migration Britain and also the fact that, by virtue of that pluralism, identity politics is now inevitable whatever we — or Kemi — would prefer.
To her credit, in her tenure as Equalities Minister Badenoch pushed new and somewhat saner schools guidance on transgender identity over the line. As an opponent of “woke” race politics, meanwhile, her track record is more ambivalent: as James McSweeney points out, a 2022 paper she championed as Equalities Minister entrenches DEI across the health service, as well as endorsing race-based loans and snooping on “hate speech” in private messages.
Is Badenoch not being transparent about her political stance against race-based quotas and “critical race theory”? Does she just not read the documents she endorses? Perhaps there’s a third possibility: that identity politics is just an unavoidable by-product of high-speed diversification. Britain has gone from an estimated 97% white British in 1971 to around 75% according to the 2021 census. It is a dramatic change, and one that has produced competing political priorities and confused responses. And the bitterest online Right-wing debates around Badenoch’s campaign were waged on the uncomfortable territory that has resulted.
Badenoch was born in London, grew up in Nigeria, and returned to the UK as a young adult. Is she British, or a foreigner? Opinions on the Right diverge sharply. Some both emphasised her Britishness while also highlighting her migrant status: a kind of Schrödinger’s identitarianism. On the one hand she was born in Britain, and therefore her childhood in Nigeria doesn’t matter; on the other hand her upbringing was the subject of Guardian headlines and represented a positive change. Which is it? Both, really.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeUntil Labour stop banging on about sex (misandrists), gender (fantasists) and race (grifters) – those that prioritise merit and character will need to keep opposing them.
Agreed!
If Badenoch is true to her values, her response to Starmer, when he congratulates her on being the first woman of African descent to lead a major UK party (as he no doubt will), would be to respond that both her ethnic descent and her gender are an irrelevance in the context of her job. Or to put it another way, that stuff is of significance now, only to the race and gender grifters on the left. Starmer and Reeves both pleased as punch, waffling on about Reeves being the first Chancellor, is the equivalent of the 12367th person to climb Everest announcing they are the first ever person to climb Everest hailing from, erm, Lewisham. Yeah thanks guys, but er, keep it to yourself.
I think you mean “irrelevance”, but otherwise agree. I’d just add I wish those on the Right who gripe about “an African being in charge” (I saw at least one in this forum and had to stop myself wading in to retort) would put a sock in it aswell, they’re just as bad as the race/gender grifters.
But I imagine Badenoch won’t let herself get bogged down in any of this chatter – she’s got too much to do.
Thanks – corrected!
Whilst I admire and endorse as well as support the choice, can anyone name one African political leader or premier who has been succesful in terms of democracy, industry, and commerce?
Can you name one reason why that question is even the tiniest bit relevant when discussing Badenoch’s ability to perform the role to which she has now been appointed?
Context, institutions and history determine what individuals are capable of and Kemi Badenoch is influenced by and set in a UK not African setting and has clearly absorbed good conservative principles.
I have been impressed by the thoughtful anti-woke analysis provided by Kemi Badenoch in interviews but it has to be said that the James McSweeny article does highlight that she has failed to ensure that what she states to be her views are entrenched in legislation.
The thicket of racist DEI regulations and legislation requires a comprehensive clear out of such divisive race based policies and it is essential that clear policies to this end are formulated by the Conservatives while in opposition. If Kemi is disinclined to spend her time on the detail she must gather ministers who are willing to formulate and promote detailed non-racist policies to replace the DEI requirements currently in place.
Equally she needs to appoint Ministers who will vigorously formulate and promote policies designed to realistically provide cheap energy in place of the unscientific and unrealistic net zero policies currently pursued. This requires consultation with scientists who understand the issues and are not captured by commercial interests currently driving unrealistic policies.
Agree about the non-racist policies but they should be nationalist as well. Pick a Brit over a foreigner. And no immigration for many years while we deal with what we already have and deport those who cause trouble or cost.
What do specifically mean here? Who counts as a “Brit”?. Should somebody born abroad – or of the wrong race – not be allowed by law to achieve high political or perhaps business office? The problem with so many right-wing arguments like this, is that they deny the kind of society that Great Britain has been for two hundred years or more, which is a broadly liberal one, not nationalist. Patriotism certainly, but ethnically base nationalism goes against a deep grain. I don’t completely despair here, because we can see the enthusiasm for example at the time of the Coronation by people of all races. These different groups are not well represented by the supposed liberal elite mainstream opinion.
The reason we have high levels of immigration is not because loads of black people have suddenly acquired political power in Britain, but because of a combination of big business interests and those people on the Left who essentially don’t see why we should discriminate in favour of British people against foreigners.
> I can think of no multiracial society that does not also feature racial politics.
That seems circular. In order to call a society “multiracial” you need to define different races, and that in itself is engaging in racial politics.
In my travelling and reading I’ve never come across a society that doesn’t distinguish between different ethnic groups. Would you prefer: ‘racial politics are a feature of all multi-racial societies’?
You could argue that Switzerland is a very successful society in which different ethnicities are recognised, and whose reasonable expectations, such as linguistic ones, are accommodated, but are not central to Swiss identity or pride. But Switzerland does seen quite an exception. It goes to show that economic and technocratic competence is also important for a country’s coherence. Unfortunately Britain is not excelling in either of those areas.
“ the more enthusiastically a polity tries to transcend ethnic identity, the less it emphasises integration”
This makes no sense to me. Surely the message KB is giving is that integration is vitally important no matter what race, religion or nationality immigrants may be.
Correct. It’s sophistry on the part of MH, which is disappointing. If that line of thought were to be accepted, there’d never be a possibility of integration.
I’d say integration is a matter of degree. If you want completely full integration you can say goodbye to Indian restaurants for example. Maybe that’s a good bargain but you have to face up to some of those facts.
I think the idea is that if we take a position of ignoring ethnic diversity (colourblind) it’s then hard to pick out those groups in need of being integrated.
But I agree it doesn’t make a lot of sense. We’re never going to so blind to ethnic identity that we have to pretend that someone newly arrived from a very different culture is no more in need of being integrated that someone whose grandparents were born here.
Ref. your second para. That’s exactly what woke types do. They treat people as blank-slate, interchangeable units.
Maybe we could pronounce her surname correctly: my schoolfriend Hamish Badenoch illustrates.
The two a’s are pronounced HAY-mish BAD-enoch. A non-Scot would be forgiven for the calling him HAM-ish BAY-denoch.
And yet Kemi in her interview with Tom McTague stated clearly that her name was pronounced BAYDENOCH. She said there was no BAD in her name. Perhaps her husband hasn’t got round to correcting her pronunciation of their name.
I just looked it up in wiki and the ‘a’ is pronounced æ as in ‘marry’. Stiil, I suppose ‘bad’ sounds bad so she has modified it slightly: worse still, when spoken by a Scot, her name sounds almost identical to ‘bad enough’!
a Scot would likely pronounce the end as ‘och’ as in loch, while others may be more likely to pronounce end of as ‘ock’ as in lock….in my opinion !
I think this is actually a fantastic opportunity for the Tories. The notion of two-tier Britain where minorities are privileged by institutions ahead of the majority has been super-charged by two-tier Keir and the Labour government. A suite of policies that removes this special status for minorities and re-asserts that every British citizen is subject to the same rules and will be treated evenhandedly will be wildly popular. That means no more quotas, no more soft-peddling criminal investigations over concerns for “community cohesion”, no more “positive discrimination” etc. The tools to do this are quite clear – ditch the Equalities Act, the Human Rights Act, the ECHR and remove power from quangos and return them to parliament. David Starkey wrote a fantastic piece on this in the Spectator on Saturday. Kemi Badenoch seems to me to be tailor-made to spearhead this initiative.
Ok, but read paragraphs 4 and 5 of the article. Unless she has radically changed her views, what you hope for isn’t going to happen. Big opportunity for Reform.
Excellent post. But a Reform govt will do it long before the fake Tories.
I agree about David Starkey’s article, that was excellent, but as for Kemi Badenoch taking forward his recommendations . . . one can but hope.
Of course the Conservative party is burdened by identity politics. It must be whilst those on the left continue to push this divisive poison.
What else should they do ? Sit back and do nothing ?
Not sure why the article is wasting time discussing whether Kemi Badenoch is British, when it admits that she was born in the UK. Pointless to argue about facts …
‘Of course the Conservative party is burdened by identity politics. It must be whilst those on the left continue to push this divisive poison’
They don’t have to discuss it in the left’s framing though, yet choose to do so.
‘I can think of no multiracial society that does not also feature racial politics. And yet it continues to be an aspiration of the liberal Right that we might one day attain such a polity, in which identities are pluralistic and yet also somehow irrelevant.’
On this you could say the so-called liberal right are utopians.
It’s probably best to not write articles about people you clearly detest Mary but whom you might rely on to defend some of your positions. I have no doubt she would not be able to similarly rely on you.
I don’t see in Mary Harrington’s piece the ‘detestation’ (strong word) you seem to have evidence for. Perhaps you have access to knowledge the rest of us lack? MH’s piece seemed fairly balanced to me: acknowledging the laudable aspirations, but noting the difficulties of realising them.
Kemi Badenoch has been known to talk the talk without walking the walk on gender self-identification, and she has been equivocal about assisted suicide. In general, though, if it is what used to be called social conservatism that you want, then the communities of post-War immigrant origin are where you need to look. Notice that after the acquittal of Sergeant Martyn Blake, no one rioted. Ask those who did riot this year what they wanted, and it would be a thus-far-and-no-further cultural settlement from about 30 years ago, except with less religion than even then. But with far better food.
”She looks forward to the time ‘when the colour of your skin is no more remarkable than the colour of your eyes or the colour of your hair’”
This is an almost exact echo of something I read as a 17 year old in March 1963. The Tory grandee, Iain McLeod, addressing a gathering of Young Conservatives, was quoted as saying “I look forward to the day when the question ‘would you let your daughter marry a black man’ will be as meaningless as the question ‘would you let your daughter marry a man with blue eyes.’”
How time has moved on! We are now surely very close to the point anticipated by McLeod.
But the reason why the quote stuck in my mind is because I found it shocking then, and I still find it shocking now – racial identity defines a people and should not be casually dismissed. Does that make me a racialist? Yes of course, and I’m perfectly comfortable with it! But good luck to Ms Badenoch, she’s going to need it.
If the color of your eyes had social correlations – in outcomes, dispositions, food preferences, musical interests, etc. – then of course we would think eye color ‘mattered.’ The desire for a ‘color blind’ society will only be satisfied by figuring out why color still matters… after many decades of wishing it didn’t, passing laws to make it not matter, pretending it doesn’t matter – it still matters. Because we’re such bad people? So long as race correlates with varying outcomes (say, athletic success?)… we’ll forever be stuck with the reality that race matters.
I’d say almost the opposite. For example black Africans perform on typical measures very much better than people of Afro-Caribbean background. They are both “black”. (And white working class people are amongst the bottom achievers). The concept of “black” of course is not a scientific category – there is huge genetic diversity within African derived populations, not to mention that the modern human population derived from Africa in the first place.
But I would agree that you can apply the wrong policies, for example making the assumption that this different of achievement is all down to discrimination rather than perhaps partly cultural factors within a community. If we do so this will not produce good results.
The concept that “racial identity” is the most important feature of any group of people is a 19th century one Social Darwinists idea. Most political states in history have been multi-ethnic, certainly including the empires which were dominant most of the time. United Kingdom obviously has a number of different ethnic groups within it, and has never focused on race-based blood and soil nationalism as a core part of its identity.
Then we have the obvious social science observations which shows that people are very much less racist when it comes to a specific person that they can engage with on a human scale, than the concept of a mass of “other” different people we can easily be suspicious of and distrust. People are certainly probe to “tribalism” very deep down as observations of hunter gather a societies show, but they certainly doesn’t have to be based on obvious skin colour differences.
Amidst the excitement it’s easy to forget that she is leader of the opposition, and won’t have a chance of governmental power until 2029. She presides over a Tory rump in parliament. Given the fickleness of her party, the question really is whether or not she can hold on as leader until the next election.
Also, I have enough experience of the Tories to know that they will rat on you in the blink of an eye once they get into power. I joined the Tories in Blair’s first term after Brown brought IR35 in – this was after I and many other colleagues campaigned against this, wrote to and met with MPs and lobbied many politicians. We got no change out of the Labour politicians but every single Tory MP at the time, including senior ones in the shadow cabinet like Maude, agreed the rules were unfair and promised to repeal them. I didn’t renew my Tory membership after they elected Duncan-Smith, but kept voting for them as the best of a bad lot. It was over ten years before the Tories got back in with Cameron and Osborne, and guess what, they not only sold us out, but extended the IR35 rules and kept extending them. I have absolutely no expectation that the Tories are not going pull the same type of stunt if they get back in power, Badenoch, Jenrick, any of them. I won’t be trusting the Tories or voting for them again.
Badenoch is asking no favours for her ethnicity, she wants an open pluralistic society in opposition to its enemies, including the authoritarian statist Labour party. Authoritarian parties of left and right who believe in the efficacy of state-delivered utopias are invariably racist and meet together at either end of their political spectrums as neo-fascist.
I don’t see how people can give the Tories credit for having a Nigerian as head of their party one moment and in the next say that it is irrelevant. It’s incoherent and dishonest. Ethnicity, made up of a common race, history and culture, is a reality and multiculturalism is its affirmation. The real question is whether ethnic diversity is a social good. Examples please, Spain, Lebanon, Nigeria, the Balkans, etc etc????
The other issue about (sensible) Badenoch is that it shows class trumps race for the Tories. Perhaps it also means that they are ditching patriotism in favour of globalisation.
“The real question is whether ethnic diversity is a social good. Examples please, Spain, Lebanon, Nigeria, the Balkans, etc etc????”
Well, how ’bout the old melting pot, the US of A?
Only one thing ever makes race unnoticeable – when cultures, attitudes, belief, dispositions and outcomes now correlated with race stop being correlated. There was a long time when Irish were not welcome in the UK, when Italians were not welcome in New York, etc. Those attitudes have disappeared, not because people magically became more moral… but because those minority communities so assimilated into the majority culture. The same will be the case for Britain’s multicultural future… it will continue to matter, not because we’re racist, but because the differences are plain and obvious. Once they fade away, we’ll magically no longer be racists.
How is race/ethnic identity politics travelling in Japan, South Korea,Poland?
As usual Mary Harrington’s article is very perceptive and highlight some of the contradictions of those of us who are opposed to progressive and identitarian politics. Yes it’s very easy to condemn this stuff, but in fact both the Conservatives and even parties further to the right become torn between partly accepting identitarian politics and rejecting it completely. For example I do think it is amazingly positive that we now have a black woman of African descent who can argue against some of them more extreme woke idiocies. (And eventually perhaps being a position of power to actually do something about it in policy terms, unlike last time!. Unfortunately that is now a very long way off).
The progressive “coalition” is ultimately very fragile – conservative leaning African Christians who are becoming a more important component of the black community, and of course Muslims, are not exactly known for their extremely liberal attitudes on sex and relationship issues. However in my opinion the Right is quite likely to blow these opportunities completely by its obsession with “Muslims” taking it over the country