Like one of her heroes – Margaret Thatcher – Kemi Badenoch is not one for turning
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July’s UK election punished the ruling Conservatives for the screw-ups and baggage of their 14 years in office. But there were two interesting things lurking underneath the top-line story.
First, the incoming Labour government had hit the sweetest of electoral sweet spots. With just 34 per cent of the vote – the smallest share of any modern UK government – it had scooped 63 per cent of the seats. It was an unprecedented demonstration of first-past-the-post translating votes into seats. And it was also a hint of vulnerability. Labour weren’t nearly as popular as their majority suggested.
Second, the Conservatives had suffered a substantial leakage to the newly established Reform UK. In almost three-quarters of their losses, the Reform vote was greater than the Conservative’s margin of defeat. To quote BBC election guru Sir John Curtice: “Of course, not everybody who voted Reform would have otherwise voted Conservative, but they most certainly voted Conservative in 2019.” Without winning the bulk of those voters back, it would be difficult to see an effective Conservative recovery path.
Now, with Kemi Badenoch as their new leader, the Conservatives have someone who might be philosophically attuned to the task.
On Jan. 2, 1980, the infant who became Kemi Badenoch was born in England and registered as Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke. The timing was fortuitous. Although her parents weren’t British citizens and she was taken to live in Nigeria two weeks later, being born on British soil before the 1981 Nationality Act changed the rules on birthright citizenship meant that she herself was a citizen.
Michael Ashcroft’s unauthorized biography describes the Adegokes as “an English-speaking couple who belonged to the Yoruba people, a West African ethnic group that makes up about a fifth of the population of Nigeria.” And while the country was politically unstable and coup-ridden, the middle-class family were largely insulated from the turbulence.
The young girl – known by the first name diminutive Kemi – had an independent streak, and a simple response when a “very patriarchal” society told her there were things girls couldn’t do. “You’d just say two words: Margaret Thatcher.”
At 16, Kemi Adegoke returned to England to study, graduated from the University of Sussex with a Master of Engineering, and went to work as an IT consultant. She became Badenoch by virtue of her 2012 marriage.
Badenoch has described herself as the functional equivalent of a first-generation immigrant. Fortunately, language wasn’t an issue. In addition to her parents being fluent, Nigeria’s approximately 500 languages meant that English was the lingua franca of the circles in which she grew up. And as the previous colonial relationship wasn’t a source of resentment, she was attitudinally primed to make a place for herself.
The Conservatives were her natural home. Thatcher had been her youthful inspiration, and “in joining the party I felt like I had found my second family.” Another mentor is an American economist, the black libertarian Thomas Sowell. She characterizes Sowell – the author of literally dozens of books – as “probably my last surviving hero.”
Badenoch abhors identity politics, which she sees as a form of divisive grievance-mongering. While the UK isn’t perfect, she regards it as the greatest country on earth. In her maiden parliamentary speech, she put it this way: “Growing up in Nigeria … the UK was a beacon, a shining light, a promise of a better life.”
In Badenoch’s view, the “Americanised narrative of slavery, segregation and Jim Crow” has nothing useful to contribute. “Most black British people who came to our shores were not brought here in chains but came voluntarily because of their connections to the UK and in search of a better life. I should know: I am one of them.”
Needless to say, Badenoch has her critics.
On the left, she’s been effectively called a race traitor and a tool of “white supremacism.” Stripped to its essence, this condescendingly implies that all blacks are supposed to have the same perspective.
And within her own party, some find her too confrontational. She would, it’s been said, cross the road to start a fight. A more sympathetic formulation describes her as “not a great one for turning the other cheek. She’s more of an eye-for-an-eye kind of girl.”
With the bloom already off the rose on the new Labour government and its leader Keir Starmer, Badenoch has an opportunity to lead a Conservative revival. To do so, she needs to find her feet in the high-profile parliamentary PMQs (prime minister’s questions) and favourably introduce herself to the huge population chunk that knows little about her.
Meanwhile, Reform UK shows no indication of going away.
Troy Media columnist Pat Murphy casts a history buff’s eye at the goings-on in our world. Never cynical – well, perhaps a little bit.
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