Kemi Badenoch vs the uniparty

Forget the hype about scrapping stamp duty. Kemi Badenoch’s announcement yesterday that a future Conservative government would scrap the tax on house sales was far from her most noteworthy intervention. Yet the truly daring parts of her speech to Tory delegates in Manchester, including her powerful takedown of identity politics, have received relatively little coverage.

Badenoch’s speech began by paying tribute to the men murdered at a synagogue in Manchester just a week ago. This, she said, was ‘an attack on all of us’ – ‘an attack on our humanity and our values of freedom, compassion and respect. It was an attack on the idea that Britain is a safe place for Jews.’

Unlike Keir Starmer, Badenoch was not afraid to call out the sources of Jew-hatred in Britain today. And she went far further than merely calling it ‘un-British’:

‘Extremism has gone unchecked. We see it manifest in the shameful behaviour on the streets of our cities. Protests which are in fact carnivals of hatred directed at the Jewish homeland… And we have tolerated the radical Islamist ideology that seeks to threaten not only Jews, but all of us, of all faiths and none, who want to live in peace… We cannot import and tolerate values hostile to our own.’

It is shocking that something so obvious needs to be said. But the fact is that Britain has been importing and tolerating radical Islamists, with values hostile to our own, for decades. Until a moment ago, even naming the problem we face would have been grounds for dismissal from polite society. The UK prime minister still struggles to name it.

Some have been determined to brand Badenoch’s words ‘toxic’. And much of the media class is clearly more comfortable talking about stamp duty than going anywhere near a discussion about Islamism. But the overwhelming majority of people will recognise that turning Britain into a safe space for Islamist extremists makes it a dangerous place – not just for Jews but for everyone.

Badenoch also challenged the identity politics that has helped stifle criticism of Islamist extremism: ‘I know that identity politics is a trap. It reduces people to categories and then pits them against each other.’ She is absolutely right. What’s more, this politics of identity and grievance has not been confined to universities or left-wing activists. It has been a pernicious feature of all recent governments, including the previous Conservative regime. In explaining that an obsession with identity is reductive and stokes conflict, Badenoch is, again, saying something that most people instinctively know to be true.

If identity politics and its categories divide us, then the answer must be something that unites us. What is needed is a strong concept of the nation and national citizenship. Might even Labour be starting to get this? In Liverpool, Labour’s conference delegates were given Union flags to wave. However, this hollow gesture was really more cringeworthy than stirring. Flags were needed precisely because no one believes that Starmer and his cronies have a patriotic bone in their bodies.

Badenoch is more credible when she talks about being proud to be British. She understands that sovereignty is not just a slogan but what binds people together. ‘Nations cannot survive on diversity alone’, she declared, adding that:

‘We need a strong, common culture, rooted in our history, our language, our institutions and our belief in liberty under the law. That is what holds us together. And that is why borders matter. Why numbers matter. But most of all why culture matters.’

Spelling this out makes clear the moral vacuum at the heart of the diversity obsession. It has left us without a shared understanding of what makes a citizen and who belongs within our borders. This has real-world consequences. It is only when we can defend Britain as a nation that it is possible to call for deporting foreign nationals who have raped girls in communities across the UK, and to tell anti-Zionist protesters that they ‘have no right to turn our streets into theatres of intimidation’, as Badenoch put it.

The Tory leader used her conference speech to do far more than make promises about cutting taxes. In challenging identity politics and explaining the importance of national sovereignty, she broke with the uniparty consensus that ‘diversity is our strength’.

Unfortunately, outside of die-hard Tories with front-row seats, few will have heard what Badenoch had to say. Manchester’s half-empty conference halls provided a stark reminder of just how irrelevant the Conservative Party has become. The pity is that her words deserved a hearing – even if, for the Conservative Party itself, the jig is surely up.

Joanna Williams is a spiked columnist and author of How Woke Won. Follow her on Substack: cieo.substack.com.