Exciting news this morning – Kemi Badenoch, a steely-eyed, anti-woke warrior princess has entered the Conservative leadership race. I’ve been a huge fan of Kemi’s ever since we worked together at the Spectator and I’m not surprised by her meteoric assent through the ranks of the Parliamentary Conservative Party, most recently as a minister in the Department for Levelling Up. She’s smart, hard-working, courageous and properly conservative. She oversaw the report produced by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, which was a seriously impressive piece of work, nailing the woke calumny that Britain is ‘systemically racist’, and declared war on Critical Race Theory in a now famous House of Commons speech. Kemi is the real deal.
She announced her intention to run in an op ed in today’s Times, which ticks all the right boxes for me.
My vote for Brexit in 2016 was a vote of confidence in our abilities as a sovereign country. We have failed to capitalise on that election winning majority of 2019. Change does not mean reheated versions of 1970s, ’80s or ’90s policies, but a new mission for our age. This requires a smart and nimble centre-right vision that can achieve things despite entrenched opposition from a cultural establishment that will not accept that the world has moved on from Blairism.
Our problems are not unique. Politics is in crisis around the world. The centre-right is out of power in many countries — America, France, Australia and Germany to name a few.
The mainstream right has too often become detached from its voter base, and rather than seeking to understand the new challenges voters faced, ignored them, leading to electoral failure and paving the way for populism in desperation. We cannot allow that to happen here.
Too often people feel that whoever is elected, the answer is more government. By promising too much and trying to solve every problem, politicians don’t reassure and inspire, they disappoint and drive disillusion. More taxes. More rules and regulations. And ever cheaper borrowing to keep government afloat no matter the cost to savers or the wider economy.
Instead, we need strong but limited government focused on the essentials.
Lower taxes yes, but to boost growth and productivity, and accompanied by tight spending discipline.
Meanwhile our country is falsely criticised as oppressive to minorities and immoral, because it enforces its own borders. We cannot maintain a cohesive nation state with the zero-sum identity politics we see today.
Exemplified by coercive control, the imposition of views, the shutting down of debate, the end of due process, identity politics is not about tolerance or individual rights but the very opposite of our crucial and enduring British values.
And if we are to see the change we need in this country we need an intellectual framework which recognises that in politics, there is no division between the cultural or economic sphere. It is no surprise the fiercest proclaimers of “social justice” usually believe in the power of government over the people, in the power of the bureaucrat over the individual, and have a distrust of people making their own decisions in the economic sphere just as much as the social.
Without change the Conservative Party, Britain, and the western world will continue to drift. Aggressive and assertive rivals will outpace us economically and outmanoeuvre us internationally.
It won’t be enough just to offer better management of relative decline. We need the discipline to transform government into an effective and streamlined machine for delivery, not a piggy bank for pressure groups. Rather than legislate for hurt feelings as we risk doing with the Online Safety Bill, we must strengthen our democratic culture at a time when democratic values are under assault from without and within. We need to reinvigorate the case for free speech, free markets and the institutions that defend a free people because our values and our ideas are too precious not to fight for with all our heart.
That’s a solid campaign platform – and the icing on the cake is Kemi’s swipe against the Online Safety Bill.
Does she stand a chance? As Paul Staines pointed out on Twitter last night, she’s two years older than David Cameron was when he became leader and has more Government experience. Admittedly, the job he got was Leader of the Opposition, not Prime Minister, but we live in strange times. I hope she gets enough endorsements from other MPs for her name to be included in the first ballot, which is expected to be on Wednesday, and then stays in the race. She’s the true face of modern conservative politics and should be much more widely known by the general public.
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