Culture Warrior Kemi Badenoch Is Already A Winner With The Tory Right Conservative Leadership

The Saffron Walden MP and former leveling minister has certainly edged ahead of Suella Braverman in the mini-race for prominence among right-wing culture warriors, securing top-level approval from Michael Gove and some positive poll figures. A Gove ally said the former rank and file secretary sees Badenoch as “brilliant” and capable of making tough decisions. There is also mutual loyalty. In the 2019 Tory leadership election, Badenoch resigned as deputy leader of the Conservative party to work on Gove’s campaign. The YouGov poll of Conservative members, released on Wednesday, showed Badenoch, 42, second on the list of people who would like to succeed Boris Johnson, although well behind Penny Mordaunt, and only slightly ahead over Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss. It is a high point for someone who has been an MP for five years, remains unknown to most of the public and has never held a ministerial post above the second tier, most recently a joint Foreign Office/levelling role which he resigned last week. But among the narrowest circles of Tory MPs and to some extent party members, Badenoch’s confident, frank state-shrinking austerity, combined with enthusiasm for culture wars, has earned her some notoriety. Her official campaign speech on Tuesday emphasized her desire for “free markets [and] limited government,” promising that an administration under her leadership would “reject Twitter’s priorities.” As with most speeches, there were few details, but ideas about cutting waste could be difficult to implement, for example the idea that money could be saved by taking resources from “redundant support staff and regional activities” in schools. Badenoch’s comment that the police should “focus on neighborhood crime, not waste time and resources worrying about hurt feelings on the internet” is likely to sit well with Tory MPs, even if some polls suggest they are not as attuned to culture war issues as some party MPs. Badenoch has been particularly critical of anything to do with ethnicity-based identity politics, pursuing it with a zeal that her supporters say is refreshingly straightforward, but others find occasionally offensive. When Badenoch resigned as minister last week, the Voice, Britain’s only black national newspaper, tweeted: “Gaslighting Minister Kemi Badenoch resigns.” Although the tweet was later deleted, it depicted the passions it evokes. Badenoch says her worldview was shaped by her experience growing up in Nigeria, where her parents moved from Wimbledon, south-west London, after she was born, and her experiences in England, which she returned to at the age of 16. . Born to two doctors, she said in her maiden speech in the House of Commons that she experienced poverty because of economic mismanagement in Nigeria. She experienced racism – although she didn’t call it that – at the hands of a teacher who told her to consider nursing when she said she wanted to be a doctor. “I can understand where the teacher was coming from…assuming we were all a disadvantaged minority because of the color of our skin. It’s typical of the mentality of the left,” he told the Daily Mail in 2017. As Equality Secretary, Badenoch was the government’s public face for defending the Sewell report on ethnic inequalities in the UK, which faced significant criticism for downplaying structural factors – ones Badenoch insists do not exist. Simon Woolley, his peer who founded Operation Black Vote, said Badenoch had a particularly strong view on such issues. “Of course we’ve always wanted a black prime minister – symbolism is important – but the rhetoric from candidates like Kemi Badenoch around the Sewell report and possibly sacking academics who articulate racial inequalities that have been couched as ‘theoretical’ is bitterly disappointing,” he said. “The reality revealed by Covid-19 is that systemic racial inequality still unfortunately prevails. No prime minister, black or white, can effectively address systemic and persistent racial inequality if its very existence is fundamentally denied.”

title: “Culture Warrior Kemi Badenoch Is Already A Winner With The Tory Right Conservative Leadership " ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-17” author: “Herbert Perry”

The Saffron Walden MP and former leveling minister has certainly edged ahead of Suella Braverman in the mini-race for prominence among right-wing culture warriors, securing top-level approval from Michael Gove and some positive poll figures. A Gove ally said the former rank and file secretary sees Badenoch as “brilliant” and capable of making tough decisions. There is also mutual loyalty. In the 2019 Tory leadership election, Badenoch resigned as deputy leader of the Conservative party to work on Gove’s campaign. The YouGov poll of Conservative members, released on Wednesday, showed Badenoch, 42, second on the list of people who would like to succeed Boris Johnson, although well behind Penny Mordaunt, and only slightly ahead over Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss. It is a high point for someone who has been an MP for five years, remains unknown to most of the public and has never held a ministerial post above the second tier, most recently a joint Foreign Office/levelling role which he resigned last week. But among the narrowest circles of Tory MPs and to some extent party members, Badenoch’s confident, frank state-shrinking austerity, combined with enthusiasm for culture wars, has earned her some notoriety. Her official campaign speech on Tuesday emphasized her desire for “free markets [and] limited government,” promising that an administration under her leadership would “reject Twitter’s priorities.” As with most speeches, there were few details, but ideas about cutting waste could be difficult to implement, for example the idea that money could be saved by taking resources from “redundant support staff and regional activities” in schools. Badenoch’s comment that the police should “focus on neighborhood crime, not waste time and resources worrying about hurt feelings on the internet” is likely to sit well with Tory MPs, even if some polls suggest they are not as attuned to culture war issues as some party MPs. Badenoch has been particularly critical of anything to do with ethnicity-based identity politics, pursuing it with a zeal that her supporters say is refreshingly straightforward, but others find occasionally offensive. When Badenoch resigned as minister last week, the Voice, Britain’s only black national newspaper, tweeted: “Gaslighting Minister Kemi Badenoch resigns.” Although the tweet was later deleted, it depicted the passions it evokes. Badenoch says her worldview was shaped by her experience growing up in Nigeria, where her parents moved from Wimbledon, south-west London, after she was born, and her experiences in England, which she returned to at the age of 16. . Born to two doctors, she said in her maiden speech in the House of Commons that she experienced poverty because of economic mismanagement in Nigeria. She experienced racism – although she didn’t call it that – at the hands of a teacher who told her to consider nursing when she said she wanted to be a doctor. “I can understand where the teacher was coming from…assuming we were all a disadvantaged minority because of the color of our skin. It’s typical of the mentality of the left,” he told the Daily Mail in 2017. As Equality Secretary, Badenoch was the government’s public face for defending the Sewell report on ethnic inequalities in the UK, which faced significant criticism for downplaying structural factors – ones Badenoch insists do not exist. Simon Woolley, his peer who founded Operation Black Vote, said Badenoch had a particularly strong view on such issues. “Of course we’ve always wanted a black prime minister – symbolism is important – but the rhetoric from candidates like Kemi Badenoch around the Sewell report and possibly sacking academics who articulate racial inequalities that have been couched as ‘theoretical’ is bitterly disappointing,” he said. “The reality revealed by Covid-19 is that systemic racial inequality still unfortunately prevails. No prime minister, black or white, can effectively address systemic and persistent racial inequality if its very existence is fundamentally denied.”