Allons-y! Back from her holidays, Kemi Badenoch launched her leadership campaign yesterday. Rival camps hoping the frontrunner would trip up will be a tad disappointed. Introduced by Francis Maude and Clare Coutinho, Badenoch provided an assured re-statement of her principles. “It’s time for something completely different”, she promised, but no Python-esque hijinks followed.
Instead, against the backdrop of the Institute of Engineering and Technology – a step up from the drab office in which she launched her first bid two years ago – Badenoch pitched that her experience as a systems engineer equipped her to rewire the Tories and the British state. “Getting my engineering degree was much more difficult than running for the leadership,” she joked.
Proving that more than one candidate knows a little Keith Joseph, Badenoch declared our party’s principles “are [those] of the British people – the principles not of the centre ground, but of the common ground”. Rather than be about our beliefs – personal responsibility, citizenship, equality under the law, family, and truth – “we need to be confident Conservatives again”.
Too often, the last government “talked Right but governed Left”. It’s a familiar charge about fourteen years that combined tax burden at its highest since Clement Attlee as net migration climbed towards 4.5 million, all whilst legislating for no-fault divorce and Net Zero by 2050, Still! Good news about the plastic straws. Was the Sturm und Drang of Getting Brexit Done worth it?
Badenoch has various explanations for why we failed to uphold our principles. Already, for The Sunday Times, she has pinned the blame on the “political system…bequeathed to us by Tony Blair” – what Peter Franklin calls “the endless round of consultations, public enquiries, judicial activism, interfering quangos and legally-binding policy frameworks” that frustrate ministerial action.
Unlike Liz Truss’s self-exculpatory enthusiasm for the ‘Deep State’, Badenoch sees a thicket of forces of inertia that she could hack through as easily as Harriet Harman’s website. “For too long…politics has been the triumph of words over deeds” – a sentiment with which few would disagree. We are left powerless to watch Labour’s clown show, all because we couldn’t match promises to action.
As two years ago, Badenoch appeals because she shares a common frustration. Why haven’t fourteen years of Conservative government made Britain a more Conservative country? Badenoch offers a diagnosis of why. She has the self-confidence to suggest that she knows she can save this country, that no one else can, and that she’d give Keir Starmer a hiding at PMQs.
Badenoch is cushioned by an air of inevitability. Coutinho, Chris Philp, and Laura Trott rowing in behind her is bandwagoning behind the presumptive victor. Both our survey and YouGov have her well in front with members, even if Jenrick leads with MPs. If one wants a plushier job under the new regime, declaring now, ahead of tomorrow’s first round of voting, seems wise.
Yet even if her latest Commons appearance opposite Angela Rayner suggests the Shadow Housing Secretary has returned from her hols invigorated, one or two questions remain about her bid. Whilst Badenoch may theorise as to where and why the previous government went wrong, she has yet to establish what she would do differently. She is studiously avoiding discussing policy.
She promises a review after the election. As with the contest’s extended timetable, perhaps this will offer an opportunity for nerves to cool, and a more enlightening discussion from all sides. Or perhaps it will let her rivals get ahead of her with a tick-list of member-friendly ideas. James Cleverly played homage to Rwanda and increased defence spending at his launch yesterday.
Whilst Badenoch may have picked up a few rising stars, she has lost the support of Neil O’Brien to Robert Jenrick. Unlike Badenoch, both came out straight after the election with an analysis of the defeat based not only on the usual laments about bureaucracy, judicial activism, and our collective penchant for scandal, but also a focus on central and concrete policy failures.
How would Badenoch raise living standards, reduce NHS waiting lists, and grip legal and illegal immigration? We know, on the latter, she has no enthusiasm for arbitrary targets or pledging to leave the ECHR. Is refusing to make promises you are not sure you can keep wiser than making none? What would that policy review look like? What will tackling those forces of inertia look like?
If there is one quality for which Badenoch is famous, it is that of never shying from a fight. Few can forget her most significant contribution to the election campaign: taking to task on Twitter the prominent “rich, lefty, white male celebrity” David Tennant after the erstwhile Time Lord had claimed he just wanted her to “shut up” and wished she “did not exist” at the British LGBT awards.
Many would find Tennant rude and defend Badenoch’s right to respond. But her choice of language was odd, especially for a woman who has never claimed to be the biggest fan of identity politics. What was even odder was for her to make the dispute central to the video that trailed her leadership launch. She says the party needs someone “who’s not afraid of Doctor Who”.
I had been hitherto unaware that this was a quality that Tory leaders required. I can’t claim to know what Margaret Thatcher’s stance on Tom Baker was, or what Alec Douglas-Home made of William Hartnell. But I can see that Badenoch’s relish for a back-and-forth with one of television’s most popular actors will worry those Tory MPs hungry for a quieter life in Opposition.
Badenoch has already once been blocked from reaching the final two, and thus the members. If too many MPs presume that if she gets to the latter she will win, and that that is a prospect they dislike, they will try their hardest to block her again. They want to focus on Labour’s failings, not on rebutting every criticism of their leader that an opinionated celebrity might air.
Nobody doubts our party has an image problem. Breaking Blue, Onward’s post-election survey, found us perceived as extreme, weak, dishonest, incompetent, and wholly out of touch. If voters believe we are weird, self-indulgent, and obsessed with picking pointless fights, will a barney with Doctor Who change that? Who does it win over? Is it the behaviour of a future Prime Minister?
What MPs want from her is not the culture warrior, but the quiet and purposeful engineer. That’s not to say that these issues don’t matter. Badenoch doesn’t deserve credit for seeing the Cass Review across the line. But the best approach to them is one that reflects her more methodical side: the slow, steady, and overwhelming accumulation of evidence.
Yesterday, Badenoch claimed that one person cannot solve the “problems of the future”. She calls her leadership bid ‘Renewal 2030’ because she wants it to be about more than just herself. For that to be borne out, Badenoch must learn, like Margaret Thatcher, to love a few personal attacks as proof she is doing something right. That is an ambition that the party can unite around.