Kemi Badenoch: the pseudo-conservative

“Britain is stagnating,” she said. “While Britain was redefining what a woman is, China was building five nuclear reactors.” The crowd applauded enthusiastically, as they did throughout her speech. It went down well. 

Then she launched into an attack on Labour, on how they’d increased taxes and how inflation was still up. “To fix our country, we must reverse Labour’s measures,” said Badenoch. “We will cancel their vindictive tax on education. We will scrap their tax on family farms. We will scrap their tax on family businesses. And we will reverse the terrible measures in Angela Rayner’s employment bill.”

But something was missing from all this. Attacking the Labour government was one thing. But the Labour Party is not really Badenoch’s biggest problem, or adversary. That was when she dropped in the famous line from George Bernard Shaw: “Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.” It was a reference to Nigel Farage.

But in framing Farage as a pig, Badenoch was doing him a disservice. Today, he was much more the elephant in the room. 

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Badenoch made a big show of refusing any direct confrontation with Reform, and instead went on with her offer of full-bore fiscal conservatism. As such, she presented herself as the sensible choice, the sound, thoughtful, rational option. “I am an engineer, not an arsonist,” she said, in a remark intended to put distance between herself and the populist trouble-makers. Instead of alt-right radicalism, she offered a “new settlement, based on Conservative values.”

It was an interesting attempt at differentiation. Certainly, she flirted with populist, culture war talking points, at one point lamenting “the erosion of the sense of who we are as a country”. But her remedy for this sense of national ennui was a straight forward dose of hard-nosed fiscal conservatism. “Reform,” she said, in a rare mention of the party that is in the throes of devouring her own, is “promising beer tomorrow”. 

Her Tory party would be much more realistic, less dreamy – much tougher. The six and a half million people claiming benefits, she said are “being paid to sit at home all day”. That had to change.” Farage has never been so forthright about the benefits bill. 

She also promised to “restrict mobility vehicles to those with serious disabilities. Those are are not for people with ADHD”. The crowd applauded, even though anyone with experience of ADHD can tell you that the last thing a sufferer needs is a mobility scooter.

In short, Badenoch wants to cut taxes, cut welfare by £23bn, get rid of stamp duty on house purchases altogether, abolish business rates on family businesses and drill for oil and gas, all of which will, she said, “unleash” the UK economy.

Badenoch is not quite a populist, and yet she is a politician whose policies – and party – have been shaped by populism to the extent that they are now essentially its creation. And when she promised today to deport 150,000 people a year from Britain, and when she spoke about “British benefits for British citizens”, it became clear that this was a new kind of political leader – Badenoch is a pseudo-conservative. For all the talk of restoring the great British high street, and all the promises of old-fashioned sound money Toryism, the plans she set out today are just as wild, unrealistic and destructive as those of any populist.

The speech went down well in the hall, and as the crowd applauded, the rictus grin on the face of Robert Jenrick, already manoeuvring to succeed Badenoch as Tory leader, showed that it had been a success. Today’s performance might help her at the local elections next May. But what she offers is a programme of cuts so radical that it amounts to a programme of fiscal extremism. This psuedo-conservative is just as radical as any populist.