An important event is approaching. A few months ago, hardly anyone seemed interested in the Tory leadership contest. Complacent Lefties, buoyed up by victory, were reviving the old cliches about deckchairs on the Titanic. Who would be the next William Hague, sacrificing youthful promise to lead his demoralised followers towards a distant vista of interminable opposition? Roll up that map of the Tory party. It will not be needed for the next few years – or should that be decades?
Now, the mood has changed. Keir Starmer has been a crucial factor. In the run-up to the election, he decided that he had two tasks. Make no mistakes and take no risks. When in doubt, say nothing and let the Tories cut their own throats. Hang on to your Ming vase, while your opponents throw the crockery at one another.
That worked, until it worked too well. The Starmerites knew how to plunder Lord Alli’s catalogues. They knew how to win an election – with massive Tory help. Now, they had to govern on their own, and the fruits of victory have quickly turned bitter.
As a result, the Tory party is in a stronger position today than anyone would have believed possible after the election. The Conservatives have one advantage. Toryism is not just a political party. In England at least, it is a tribe: a great national movement. This means that even after a heavy defeat, recovery is possible. In 1832, 1846, 1906, 1945, 1997 and 2024, opponents were ready to write the Tories off, but the party had one life-saving instinct. It understood that it should never find itself on the wrong side of history for very long.
Now, the Tories need another historical realignment, and cometh the hour, cometh the woman. Some woman at that. The party of Disraeli and Thatcher ought to be about to entrust its destiny to a black woman. Not so long ago, this would have been implausible.
Being old, my memories go back to 1975, when a by no means convincing candidate emerged, partly because she was the only plausible contender who did not seem afflicted by self-doubt (in some ways, that was deceptive). Three successive Tory premierships had ended in failure. For all Harold Wilson’s wily meretriciousness, he seemed to have become the leader of the natural party of government. The Tories had tried to deal with the economy, promote growth and boost employment by post-war Keynesian remedies. This no longer seemed to be working, largely because the trade unions were determined to wreck everything. In despair, many senior Tories had come to believe that the best they could hope for was the gentle management of gradual decline. Others, despairing of any solution, thought to themselves: ‘Well, our nostrums have failed. This woman seems to have an alternative. We may as well give her a go.’
Margaret Thatcher took her chance, had her go and rescued her country. Despite our current discontents, matters are less serious today. But there is a problem, which afflicts much of the West, and which Kemi Badenoch is uniquely well-placed to solve. By the end of the 1980s, it seemed that socialism had become fossilised. The West had won the Cold War. Free-market capitalism was the dominant economic doctrine in all successful countries. Could we look forward to a new world order and the end of history, at least in the sense of fundamental ideological conflicts?
Alas, no. To understand why, we have to fall back on theology and even myth. ‘Original sin’ is still the best two-word account of the human condition. Even if matters should appear to be going well, human beings will find a way of derailing them. As for malevolent ideologies, their proponents are like the wicked witch in Narnia: never fully extinct.
Today, the heirs of the communists have moved from the economic battlefield to the cultural one. Their aim is to discredit the West. There are historical weapons which they can use. Slavery in the US, Hitler in Germany, the Civil War in Spain, Mussolini in Italy, the French revolution, so that the modern state is founded on regicide, plus Vichy with its many inglorious aspects.
By comparison with all that, it might seem that Britain was much less vulnerable to historical denigration. But that has not inhibited the Lefties. An absurdly one-sided account of the British Empire and slavery is reinforced by the insistence that modern Britain is a cruelly racist society. In many schools, white children are taught that they ought to feel guilty for their past and for the colour of their skin: black people, that they live in a hopelessly oppressive society in which they cannot hope to thrive and prosper.
Over to you, Kemi Badenoch. She is black and proud of it: British, and proud of that too. She is a patriot, who insists that Britain is a land of opportunity, for all races, creeds and colours. She abhors the soft bigotry of low expectations, which those who really want to encourage racism in the UK are using to hold black children back. She also believes in tolerance, but that includes tolerance for women who want to use their own changing rooms and not have to share them with men.
In other words, she wants to banish wokery, when it is used to inflame racial tensions, deny opportunities to children from poor backgrounds and defy common sense in matters of gender. Common sense: she will be its champion.
There are other challenges which will face the new Tory leader. It seems all too likely that the Starmerites, while insisting that they believe in growth, job creation and enterprise, will promote economic policies which undermine all three. In a dangerous world, where Britain needs a strong Foreign Secretary, we have the hapless David Lammy, whose inadequacy is painful and constant. There are battles to be fought: victories to be won. With Kemi Badenoch, the Tory party would have a Leader who is up for a fight: a champion who is hungry for victory. Suddenly, Tory morale could undergo a miraculous revival. As for Reform, she would offer a contrast between a real party of real-world government and Nigel Farage’s cheeky-chappie, fun-loving front.
A lot of Labour people are worried about her. So they should be. They do not yet know the half of it.
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