The Dying Breaths of the Conservative Party
Would the Last Person Please Turn the Lights Off?
At a time of unprecedented political volatility, in picking Kemi Badenoch for leader, the Conservative Party’s ageing membership chose continuity. It is perhaps a sign of how radically British politics is shifting (largely, ironically, as a result of the Conservative Party’s own failed governance record) that by the end the contest came down to two candidates of the Tory Right — or at least what now constitutes as the Tory Right.
Did the party make the right decision? It is difficult to critique Badenoch’s platform on a policy level because her campaign chose not to propose any, instead running on vibes. Indeed, the battle between Badenoch and Jenrick was an intergenerational war within the British Right, with younger Reformists who had been flirting with Farage and what he offered backing Jenrick, and older members fighting the culture war battles of half a decade ago hailing Badenoch, often on grounds of identity politics.
On immigration, now rapidly becoming the defining issue of British politics, Jenrick possessed a clear advantage, having resigned in protest at the destructive “Boris Wave” of post-Covid mass migration, either as a matter of principle or, more likely, because he could read the political runes. Through a mixture of concrete policy proposals and a generally combative attitude, Jenrick suddenly went from a nameless cabinet minister to the defacto leader of the anti-mass immigration Right, outflanking Reform UK and presenting a plausible path towards retaking the Red Wall. Throughout the campaign, Nigel Farage had shown himself rattled by Jenrick’s performance, and his relief was palpable when Jenrick lost.
I haven’t commented much on Kemi Badenoch since she became leader, mostly because I don’t think she has much staying power and will end up as nothing more than a footnote in the Conservative Party’s history, the last gasp of its death throes. It remains unlikely she can revive the Tory Party’s fortunes. Starmer’s floundering Labour government will allow any opposition to play politics on easy mode – but it is hard not to view Badenoch’s victory as a missed opportunity for reformist conservative governance. As Labour slumps, and Reform sighs in relief, her elevation will leave British politics a three-horse race for the near future.
Where to begin? She's an absolute maniac, a delusional Thatcherite harping on issues and positions that do not matter within the current national debate. Hard-right economics paired with the funhouse mirror version of British liberals' dematerialised social policy -in other words, culturally woke and scolding. The novelty of her identity is her only shield from which she uses to deflect valid criticisms, much in the same way she chastises liberal elites for doing.
In 2018, Badenoch boasted in the Commons that she successfully lobbied to removing annual limits on work visas and also on international students to benefit her home country, Nigeria. In 2010, Badenoch wrote a blog post while running as a Parliamentary candidate for Dulwich & West Norwood, promising to “Use whatever influence I have to speak out against those who are cheating and robbing Nigeria and who seek refuge for themselves or their money in the UK.” Pandering toward the interests of an unassimilated ethnic subgroup in Britain is hardly socially conservative toward the native host population. Badenoch’s loyalties don’t seem to rest with the country she had made her new home, the country she wants to lead in the future, but instead with her ancestral homeland. How can the Conservative Party claim to want to conserve British traditions and institutions when their leader harbours ethnic pride for a foreign nation?
Badenoch has attempted to rehabilitate her image on this front, to varying degrees of success. In an article for the Telegraph shortly after becoming leader, Badenoch wrote: “Culture is more than cuisine or clothes. It’s also customs which may be at odds with British values. We cannot be naïve and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnichostilities at the border, or that all cultures are equally valid. They are not. I am struck for example, by the number of recent immigrants to the UK who hate Israel. That sentiment has no place here.”
While her astute analysis that cultures are not equally valid is worthy of praise, the litmus test for abiding by British values is not, first and foremost, a love of Israel. I myself have lived in Britain all my life and have never visited the Jewish state. Her rival, Jenrick, instead focused on how “English identity” — the shared culture, history, and heritage of native British people — is being erased by Woke revisionists. Such a sudden love for our collective sense of self led Jenrick to suggest historian David Starkey be given a “dukedom”. This certainly signifies a break from the Sunak government in which Jenrick served. That’s a break Badenoch has not yet proposed.
Thanks to her Thatcherite background, she's even too dogmatic to do the whole European-right, 'we must support working-families with subsidies so that we have a strong nation, workforce etc' bit. Instead, she remains hostile against maternity pay, child pay and childcare support in any capacity. To put simply, she’s the neoliberal version of the Khmer-rouge - give birth and keep on working in the field as soon as you've been brought into this world.
Her economic positions can be summarised as resuscitating the voodoo tax-cuts like it's still 1984; cutting into the bones after you've stripped the flesh from what bits of civil-society kept everything from going completely feral; gutting of what regulatory state remains and selling the copper-wire; war is good; no action on energy prices and new forms of energy development except either 'let’s have private firms do fracking' or a naive belief that 'the market will invent something'; environmental externalities don't exist so 'don't be so woke' about the excrement in the waters and executive bonuses; poor people deserve to go into the shredder if they can't bootstrap ('workhouses are too socialist'); and turbo-posting culture war slogans making up the rest. As far as hardline libertarian-conservatives go, she makes Liz Truss look like the second coming of Robert Nozick, intellectually.
Jenrick, to his credit, at least offered a noticeable break from the founding orthodoxy of the party, showing a willingness to entertain new economic proposals. While both contenders ritually invoked Thatcher’s legacy - as is customary for their party - Jenrick presented a clear and attractive emphasis on industrial policy. He focused on cheap energy with an emphasis on nuclear power — particularly the Small Modular Reactors so bafflingly neglected by the state — alongside infrastructure building and supply-side planning reforms. As Jenrick observed, “the economic consensus of the last 25 years is collapsing,” and in fact the rhetorical gap between him and Keir Starmer on reformist industrial policy is markedly narrow. If anything, Jenrick offered all the attractive elements of Labour’s economic offer with none of its flaws of crippling taxation and a risky and soon-to-be-politically-toxic emphasis on renewable energy over a stable and secure path to decarbonisation.
The crown of British political reform still lies in the gutter – if Badenoch means to wear it, she needs to start outlining what she proposes to do, not just who she is. The party may be won by platitudes, but the country remains restive and hungry for serious change – and is more willing than ever to turn on politicians who fail to deliver it.
The pessimist in me says that no matter what Badenoch does or says, the Conservatives are plagued by such deep institutional rot that it’s unsalvageable. That was most illuminating when Tom Tugendhat, one of the other leadership candidates, was asked which policy implemented by the past Conservative governments he most regrets and the only example he could give was ‘vaccine passports.’
Perhaps being stuck in an antiquated neoconservative paradigm explains why he thought vaccine passports were the most un-conservative policy implemented in the last fourteen years, instead of the irreversible cultural and demographic change, economic privation, and violent crime caused by admitting more than a million migrants a year. His proposed cap of 100,000 is ten times higher than promised by his predecessors. He refuses to withdraw from the ECHR. There is nothing “moderate” or “grown-up” about continuing a policy of failed foreign interventionism, and then importing en masse the aggrieved members of the same countries Britain declares war against.
For the Conservative party to reanimate from electoral irrelevancy, they must go against the remaining rump of wets on the green benches and speak straight to both members and estranged voters. This means promising to deport foreign criminals, reduce net migration to pre-Blair levels, and undo the economic harms inflicted on Britain by globalization, high tax, and net-zero policies. Whether or not they look credible in delivering on these promises will determine whether the Tories or Reform are the chief contender to Labour at the next general election. But for both the Conservative party and the British public, it will be a long five years in opposition.
Reversing the failures of the last 30 plus years of policy failures (both parties) in the UK is going to be brutal and will require a commitment, conviction, focus, energy and leadership that we have not seen since Thatcher or Blair. I am not optimistic because the rot is so deep and entrenched and the cure will have to be aggressive if not a little nasty that no one will stomach the fight.