Following a pivotal week, the contours of Britain’s post-election landscape are more sharply defined, and its dividing lines more vivid. Last week’s budget pointed towards an era of more proactive, interventionist government by Labour. On the other side of the House of Commons aisle, the election of Kemi Badenoch as the Conservative party’s new leader confirms that Tory opposition will, for now, be led by an abrasive neo-Thatcherite with a taste for culture wars. Traditional left-right politics is making something of a comeback.
As she assembles her shadow cabinet and prepares for her first prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, Ms Badenoch’s achievement in becoming the first black leader of a major UK party is a formidable one. The rapidity of her journey to the top – only seven years after becoming an MP – is testament to her self-belief, political drive and ambition. It is all the more notable given that she describes herself as essentially a first-generation immigrant, having been born in a London hospital but raised until the age of 16 in Nigeria. Her remarkable rise is another indication that Britain’s politics has begun to reflect its modern multicultural reality.
In most other respects, however, Ms Badenoch is a blast from the past. She spent her campaign selling a version of old-time Tory religion, attributing the Conservative party’s worst defeat in modern times to its having “talked right, but governed left”. Pushing the notion that voters were pining for her vision of a small-state, low-tax, deregulated Britain, and went elsewhere when it did not materialise, is eye-catchingly counterintuitive. As the Tories begin the immense task of restoring lost credibility and trust, it speaks of denial rather than renewal.
Reheated Thatcherism, updated for the post-Brexit era, will be an extremely hard sell to a country blighted by dysfunctional public services and underinvestment. But Ms Badenoch’s first challenge will be to reassure the two-thirds of Tory MPs who failed to back her. The last leader to take charge with such a precarious parliamentary mandate was Sir Iain Duncan Smith in 2001, who lasted a mere two years in the job.
To do better, Ms Badenoch will need to convince colleagues that her notoriously rebarbative and provocative style is more of an asset than a liability. Some may judge that, for a shellshocked party struggling to regain the public’s attention, any publicity is good publicity. But high-profile rows during her campaign over levels of statutory maternity pay, and support for autistic people, testified to a capacity for gaffes that will worry more cautious backbenchers.
Labour, though, should not underestimate her abilities. The challenge facing the Conservative party is enormous; to win the next election it will need to tempt back voters from Reform on the radical right, as well as defectors to Labour and the Lib Dems. But Ms Badenoch is a more creative and wily politician than her defeated rival, Robert Jenrick.
In contrast to Mr Jenrick, who fought a one-dimensional campaign around immigration and a Reform-friendly pledge to take Britain out of the European court of human rights, Ms Badenoch has refused to commit to specific policies. She will for now paint with a broad brush, positioning the Tories as a culturally conservative, pro-market alternative to Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour. But Conservative fortunes are unlikely to be revived by doubling down on the mistakes of the past.
