Kemi Badenoch gave quite an extraordinary performance at Prime Minister's Questions yesterday during her first outing as leader of the Conservatives.
She condescended Keir Starmer in her opening comment before moving straight on to congratulate Trump on his election victory. She then said:
As Leader of His Majesty's Opposition, I will be taking a different approach to the last Opposition, by being a constructive Opposition, so I would like to start by congratulating President-elect Trump on his impressive victory this morning. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary met him in September. Did the Foreign Secretary take that opportunity to apologise for making derogatory and scatological references, including
“Trump is not only a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath. He is also a profound threat to the international order”?
If he did not apologise, will the Prime Minister do so now, on his behalf?
Starmer did not do so.
Badenoch then demanded that he invite Trump to the UK to address both Houses of Parliament.
Starmer did not agree to do so.
Why would a Tory leader demand that a convicted felon, a man who sought to overthrow a democratic election result with violence, and someone who has been found guilty of rape by a court to address both houses of parliament? The answer is that she buys into his agenda and ignores who he is when doing so.
I have already highlighted some aspects of her viciously nasty agenda this week. Project 2025, to which I have referred this morning, was written by think tanks closely aligned with the far-right ones situated in Tufton Street, just around the corner from parliament, all of which now have a considerable influence on Tory thinking.
We have to assume that Badenoch is trumpeting Trump for a reason. Where he goes, she intends to follow. At least we know that, for sure. It will make it easier to work out what she is likely to say and want to do. That, though, is all that is good about this.
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Badenoch’s response makes me think that in many ways, Trumpism, the Alt-Right etc., works like a theory about Al -Queda I once came across.
It is an idea that is launched into the world through personal communications technology, aimed at activating a certain mindset and building up a rump of followers to form a movement.
It is a very loose looking arrangement and easily deniable.
But it works.
Badenoch – who knows what her ‘political mis-advisors’ are telling ‘it’ – for all we know, she is already stirring up differences that will lead to policies that will hurt the UK during Labour’s period in office, to be dropped when the ‘natural party of leadership’ returns.
Or it might be that genuinely thinks like this – Badenoch is a bit of tool isn’t she? Or a bit of both. But that ‘tool’ – like too many others – is now in our seat of power.
It does not bode well – she could do a lot of damage before she is thrown on the scrap heap. And then there is the ‘most sophisticated electorate in the world’ – dear old blighty – to contend with. Too many over here like what they see in the U.S. right now.
Well done Starmer for not falling into Badenoch’s childish but predictable traps and refusing to go along with it.
Badenoch is on shaky ground, as consistent polling before the US election showed that voters of all main parties – if they had a vote – would back Harris by a large margin. The only voters who would back Trump (and even here it is was not a very solid majority) was Reform voters. Tory voters were only slightly less likely to back Harris than Labour or Lib Dem voters.
Badenoch needs to be careful.
It is indeed Tufton Street, the rentier interests and similar backers to Trump (and same with Reform) that are main influencers to the Tories, and are driving Badenoch’s utter drivel.
Thank you, both.
I would not be so sure about Starmer. I think, ultimately, Blair and Mandelson and their (often US) donors, will make that decision.
Kemi gives it attidude. The worst response for her is probably no response.
Always interesting to understand a little of politicians formative early years. His from a recent BBC profile.
”Her Nigerian parents were comfortably middle class, “with a car and a driver”, she says. Father Femi was a GP with his own clinic, and her mother Feyi was an academic at the University of Lagos college of medicine.
But Ms Badenoch – full name Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke – was born in the private St Teresa’s Hospital in Wimbledon in January 1980 after her parents travelled to Britain and paid for private healthcare. It meant she had a British passport.
She then lived in Lagos until she was 16, when she returned to Wimbledon to take her A levels, in maths, biology and chemistry, living with her mother’s best friend “for a better future”.
That might fit some people’s definition of an economic migrant. Her parents do seem to have had a shrewd understanding of how to ‘play the system’ to provide their daughter the opportunities for the future.
Trump’s victory will embolden the far-right everywhere. Badenoch’s leadership places HMO as part of that global far-right. Badenoch and Farage will compete ferociously to be at the centre of Trump reflected beams of US-enabled liberation and freedom (PLUS she wants her 4m Conservative voters that voted ReformUK at GE24 back). Before Christmas she’s likely to be calling on Starmer to ban abortion, on Israel to formally annex the West Bank, and on Russia to re-invade Ukraine (and do it properly this time!).
The question is, will an emboldened Badenoch say or do anything different now that Trump’s in the WH? than she would if he weren’t I don’t expect she actually will, she’ll just say it clearer and louder and get more support from the BBCMSM.
As a left-leaning democrat, I hope her new-found confidence (and its inevitable amplification by the deceitful BBC and MSM) actually repels public support, but will it?
Not likely if Starmer and his Labour party don’t offer a radical alternative, simply ask ‘how high?’ every single time Trump barks ‘Jump!’ instructions, when it offers no fundamentally different values than Osborne and Cameron did in 2010, and when Sir Keir’s reputation as a ‘servant of the security state’ is seen to be fully-deserved and under-stated.
Maybe more than emboldening the far-right, Trump’s election intensifies the UK Left’s need fto present a cogent cohesive left wing alternative to Labour?
So the panto season opened in the HoC @ PMQs. If this is the best that Bad Enoch can do then she might have a shelf life longer than her doppelganger – Truss – but she will have minimal impact. Meanwhile, in the wings the storm is gathering (climate).
Trump was undone last time by Covid. His response was mad &, I’d suggest this was why he lost (2020). He (and his assortment of clowns) will provide equally incompetent to future “events”. Ditto the imbeciles behind Bad Enoch.
Neo-liberalism is dead – but sadly like the zombie it is, it does not know it is dead (was it ever living?).
As for those that voted for Trump – I wonder if they would be happy if their duaghter was assaulted by him…….showing that large parts of the voting US population lack empathy.
I can’t imagine that Bad Enoch will be in place for too long and I doubt she’ll have the appeal she needs to get anywhere electorally.
She’s arrogant, with nothing to back it up, noisy without having one iota of charm and thoroughly incompetent. And, I hate to say it, but she’s also black which won’t be liked by a decent enough chunk of the population to matter.
All she has is the lines fed to her by Tufton Street and culture wars and I don’t think that is going to be enough, even with the backing of the billionaire-controlled media and social media disinformation.
I get the feeling that she’s going to attempt to park the Tory tanks on Reform’s lawn, to some degree, so the biggest thing to be concerned about is an electoral pact between the two at the next election.
Her incompetence has been shown over and over again and she gave a perfect example yesterday at her first PMQs, claiming Reeves hasn’t mentioned defence in the budget. Which she did, several times.
Politics in recent years has shown that arrogance and ignorance aren’t necessarily a barrier to success, but laziness is. Johnson was lazy, but not ignorant – he just didn’t care about the truth. Bad Enoch doesn’t have the personality to carry this off.
Going back to Trump, there’s a tiny piece of me that sort of hopes that he does go ahead with the ridiculous policies he has promised which would hammer the US economy into the ground. It would put a nail in the coffin of the far right to see the richest country in the world descend into economic chaos due to the policies they espouse.
Only a tiny piece of me, of course, because I realise that millions would suffer terribly, both in the US and around the world due to the ensuing recession (not to mention the fate of the poor immigrants he claims he will deport).
They’ll only use the typical playbook and blame somebody else for their failings, just as Brexit failed because it wasn’t done the right way.
We live in interesting times.
Yes, I think it is understood in the Tory party that Badenoch is a place-holder until a ‘real’ PM surfaces. Let us hope that Johnson has not been encouraged by Trump’s success.
I don’t think abortion will run as an issue in this country. Immigration has done and will continue to, and sadly Starmer is unlikely to become sensible on this any time now. I certainly think the New Tories will air the death penalty as a policy quite early, to ascertain reaction. Culture war seems to have burnt out to some degree as a strategy, so economy may be a battleground, and really the one sensible big move would’ve been a Norway style agreement with the EU to defuse economic problems, agreement on movement etc. The refugee process could’ve come under that with Calais assembly point, Kent sifting and a placement process geared to needs e.g. where economic need is (NHS for a start). What is worrying me more than anything is food. We do not want the ludicrous low welfare standard foodstuffs from USA, Aus etc, but we are drifting into dangerous territory now as home produced food levels fall. More than ever, we need a 1945 style government Green National Policy with powers of seizure and direction on farming, to sort a rational National Food Strategy out. Pie in the sky, alas.
I dont understand why starmer isn’t all for Trump they both enable genocide and favour the rich / big corporations and private health care etc